


Family From Strangers.

by staringatthesky



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Angst, Drama, Family, Friendship, Gen, Romance, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-26 15:26:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staringatthesky/pseuds/staringatthesky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because just when Rosalie thought she had it all under control, two new vampires showed up and insisted they were a part of her family. The story of Alice and Jasper joining the Cullens, and how Rosalie learned to trust her new brother and sister and how they all became a family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Approaching Change

**Author's Note:**

> A/N- It feels like ages since I’ve written anything, but when someone asked if I’d try writing another story from Rosalie’s POV about when Alice and Jasper joined the family I thought I’d give it a try. I’d written about in from Alice’s viewpoint in In Waking and Dream, so I’m taking those chapters as the basis for this. It’s not going to be too long really, I’m just going to play with Rosalie and Emmett, and take a look at the relationships between all the Cullens as they learn to be a family.  
> As always, comments and questions and suggestions are more than welcome! All the characters are taken from Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight universe, they are not mine, I’m just borrowing them with much gratitude!

“I wish you weren’t going,” I murmured, pressing my face into the curve of Emmett’s neck and shoulder and breathing in the smell of his skin.

“It’s only two nights,” Emmett said comfortingly, combing his fingers through my hair and running them down along my back. “I’ll be back on Sunday.”

I sat up and pouted at him, my long hair falling in messy waves across my face. “But I’ll miss you.” 

Emmett ran his hands through his curly hair and groaned, “Aww, don’t do this to me baby! You know I promised Edward that he and I would go on a hunting trip before you make us all start school next week.”

I made a face at him, and then shrieked as he lunged and grabbed me, rolling us across the bed in a laughing tangle of bare limbs and long hair. We ended up with me squirming beneath him as he used his much greater size and weight to press me down into the bed as he nuzzled at my neck.

“You know you can come with us if you want,” Emmett said as he nibbled at my earlobe. “There’s gonna be bears…it’ll be great.”

I pushed him off me and shook my head. “I know, but I don’t want to. I’m just teasing you, really…I know how much you’ve been looking forward to going.” I didn’t really enjoy the multi day hunting trips that the two boys liked, and I knew Edward wouldn’t want me going. “You and Edward will have more fun without me. I want to go over my clothes and get things ready for school on Monday.”

“Okay.” Emmett stretched and then rolled back towards me, wrapping his arms around me and rubbing his face in my hair with a happy growl. “I know it’ll be good hunting with Edward, but damn it baby doll, you don’t make it easy for a man to leave you!”

I giggled, and squirmed free. “It’s all just part of my charm.” I kissed him, hard and briefly, and then slid off the bed before he could get carried away again. “Now, get away with you! I can hear Edward banging away at the piano in the living room in a way that indicates he is definitely _not_ happy that you’re making him wait…you were supposed to leave hours ago.”

“He knows I get distracted,” Emmett said, unbothered. “I’ve got to say a proper goodbye to my girl…” He flashed his dimples at me and then caught the pair of old grey trousers I threw at him. They’d already been patched on the knees and would be no loss if they were ruined during the hunting trip, as Emmett’s clothes almost inevitably were.

I slipped on my dress and began brushing my hair as Emmett yanked on the trousers and laced his boots. He added a button down shirt that bore faint traces of bloodstains, and then unhooked his Cullen crest cuff from his wrist and tossed it carelessly onto the dresser. For a moment he looked at me with a half-smile, and then took the brush from my hand and ran it gently through my hair.

“There’s one good thing about me going away for a little while anyway,” he said cheerfully.

“And what’s that?” I turned to face him, curving my arms up around his neck and moulding myself against him.

“I get to come back,” Emmett said, his voice low, as he bent his head to mine and kissed me deeply. “I get to come back…and know that you’re going to be waiting to welcome me home.” Once again he kissed me, and for a moment the whole world shrank down to nothing but the taste and smell and feel of my beloved man in my arms.

I drew in a shaky breath. _Am I always going to want you like this? Am I always going to feel like you’re taking a little part of me away every time you leave?_ “I’ll be waiting Emmett…but you’d better not come back smelling like an animal if you want that kind of welcome home!”

Emmett laughed, and kissed me again. “Promise I won’t baby doll! Okay, Edward, I’m coming!” he bellowed, in response to a particularly stormy crash of chords from the piano. He grinned at me, his eyes bright. “Now Rosa girl, behave yourself while I’m gone.”

“As if I ever do anything else,” I scoffed, taking his hand and pulling him out to the living room. 

Edward immediately stopped playing and rose from the piano bench with a long suffering sigh. “So you do still want to go hunting?” he grumbled to Emmett. “I was beginning to wonder…”

“You two are heading out then?” Esme asked, interjecting quickly before I could say anything.

“If Emmett has quite finished saying goodbye to Rosalie we will!” Edward said in exasperation, shaking his head at me with a grin. “It’s only two nights Rosalie, and I’ll bring him back to you in one piece.”

I stuck my tongue out at him, while Emmett grabbed him and rumpled his hair. “Leave my girl alone,” he said amiably, adding in a teasing tone. “I don’t like being away from her either. You’ll understand one day, my son!”

Edward snorted and pushed Emmett’s hands away. “Get lost!”

Emmett laughed, and the two of them moved towards the door, speeding up to a run as they leaped off the porch and vanished into the trees.

I looked after them for a moment, feeling the tiny thread of tension settle in and knowing that I wouldn’t be able to completely relax until Emmett was home again. He was a vampire and practically indestructible, I knew that there was very little rational reason to worry about him, but the tiny hollow place left inside me from his absence was based on love, and that was not and never would be rational.

 “Rosalie darling, would you be able to help me pin up the hem on a new dress I bought?” Esme asked brightly.

“Sure.” I knew Esme was quite capable of pinning up her hems alone, and had only asked me for my help in order to distract me, but for once I didn’t mind. Despite the things I had planned on doing in his absence, the hours until Emmett returned seemed to stretch out before me for too long. 

I followed Esme into her sewing room where she slipped on the new navy print shirtwaist style dress, and then stood on the chair so I could pin the hem.

“It’s just the two of us then,” Esme said companionably. “Edward and Emmett plan to be gone until Sunday, is that right?”

I nodded, my mouth full of pins.

“Carlisle is working overnight at the hospital,” Esme went on. “He’ll be home by noon tomorrow though, and he has the rest of the weekend off.” I pinned the last inch of the hem, and Esme hopped lightly down from the chair and went and looked at herself in the mirror. “Thank you Rosalie that will be a much better length.” She frowned at her reflection. “You don’t think the print is too young?” she asked doubtfully.

I laughed. “Esme, you’re not old! I mean…you don’t _look_ old…” My words drifted off and I shrugged helplessly. Age was not a simple concept for those in our family. The age Esme appeared to be, the age she actually was if you went by birthdate, the age she claimed to be…none of these were the same.

Esme giggled lightly. “It’s more about looking appropriate as Carlisle’s wife at the hospital. I’ve been invited to a lunch by the other doctors’ wives and I had thought to wear this, but I don’t want to look too young. Not when I’m supposed to have three rather big children going to high school.”

“We’re all adopted, remember?” I muttered peevishly. I had argued strenuously against the idea of Edward, Emmett and I being enrolled in school as adopted siblings but I had lost that battle. I knew some kind of ruse was necessary and the most straightforward story would raise the least interest, but pretending Emmett was my brother was disgusting.

“I’m sorry about that Rosalie,” Esme said sincerely. “I know I wouldn’t like denying my relationship with Carlisle in public, and I’m sorry that you and Emmett have to do that. I realise how awkward and uncomfortable it must be. But for the three of you to attend school it’s simply the most believable story for our family.”

I sighed. “I know, and I’m sorry I keep complaining. But it’s a difficult cover story to keep up, sometimes.” I grimaced as I recalled, with a squirming feeling of humiliation, the awfulness of being caught kissing ‘my brother’ Emmett at school, and the rapidly arranged family move that had followed. “I’ll try with it though. And I think that dress is lovely…who cares what any of those old wives think anyway?”

“You’re right,” Esme said. “I shouldn’t worry, but you know how important it is that we fit in and don’t draw attention to ourselves if we can help it.” She hung the dress back on the hanger and put on her other skirt and shirt. “I’ll hem this now. I’ve done the alterations to your new school clothes too, so you can take them back to your room with you now.”

“Thank you.” I collected the skirts that Esme had taken in for me and carried them back to my room to put them away. I hung them in my closet, taking a moment to look with pleasure at all the pretty new things I had for school. Dresses and skirts and sweaters…it would be lovely to get dressed for school each day knowing that someone other than my family would see.

Despite how much I disliked pretending to be Emmett’s sister, I was looking forward to starting at the new school on Monday. I enjoyed studying, and although parts of the high school curriculum were beginning to get very repetitive my education since Carlisle changed me had been patchy and disrupted and it was still interesting enough. I had also investigated the nearest college and decided I would work towards being admitted to their mathematics program

More than that though, it was the involvement with the human world that I craved. Even though we were forced to live our lives in the peripheral shadows of the human world, I loved being able to pretend that I was something other than what I was. I was obsessed with the life that could never be mine.

I was also acutely aware that even though time never touched me the world was always changing. I had grown up in the 1920s, in a society moving away from the shadow of the Great War. As my friends and I had danced and flirted and laughed, no one had dreamed back then about the bleakness of the Depression, and the horrors of another World War that we were hurtling towards. But they had come and then passed, and with the truth of Auschwitz and the other death camps, with the reality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki now burned deep into the human consciousness, it was a very different world to the one I had known in my own human days. Unlike my peers, who were now all in their thirties, I was caught at forever eighteen and desperate to find a place for myself with this new generation.     

With a sigh I shut the closet and wandered out to the living room, where I settled myself at the piano and pulled out my music books. At least with Edward away I could work on mastering his latest composition. I loved Edward’s music but loathed playing it in front of him, knowing how my mistakes grated on him, so I always snatched any opportunity to play when he was away.

It was a pleasant weekend, even without Emmett. Esme and I sat companionably together while I played the piano and she worked on her scrapbook, we played several games, and then we went through the latest bookseller’s catalogue and selected _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_ as the book for our next family book club. Esme was a little doubtful that Edward would appreciate another ‘children’s’ book (he still bore a grudge about the Enid Blyton, even though I had said I was sorry!) but I thought the theological implications would interest Carlisle and could lead to some good discussion. I also pointed out to Esme that there was a science fiction novel, _I,Robot_ ,  due to be published the following month and Edward would no doubt choose that even though she didn’t really like sci-fi, so she may as well choose something she wanted this time. Esme agreed and went for the chequebook, while I flicked through the catalogue and marked other books due out in the following months that I wanted to look at. I always had opinions on what book we should choose but I never really lost out whatever the final choice was- I read anything.

Carlisle came home from the hospital with a bundle of newspapers and magazines which I devoured, before I waved goodbye early on Sunday morning and went out hunting. I thought it would be polite to give Esme and Carlisle some time alone, and I didn’t want to be thirsty when I started school so I took my time and completely sated myself before I returned to the house.

Taking my book I settled into an armchair in the living room. Carlisle and Esme were on the porch, talking quietly, but I paid no real attention until I caught the distant sound of footsteps. I was on my feet before the cadence of the steps really registered, and then I was swept with a wave of unease that made all my senses flare into hyper alertness.

_That’s not Emmett and Edward._

_The scent…it’s vampire. Strangers._


	2. Welcome Strangers?

I stepped warily out on to the porch. Carlisle and Esme were both standing, and although it was apparent from the look on Carlisle’s face that he didn’t know the vampires approaching us, neither of them seemed more than cautiously interested. I looked past them and watched, my face expressionless, as the two figures approached us from the shadow of the trees and came to a stop at the bottom of the steps.

The girl drew my eye first. She was tiny, short and delicate looking, with a thin figure and dark hair cut as short as a boy. Standing at the foot of the steps she wasn’t moving, and yet her whole body seemed to quiver with energy and excitement. The smile on her face was almost rapturous as she gazed up at us, and I noticed with a jolt of surprise that her large, expressive eyes were the same golden yellow as my own.

The man at her side was her opposite in many ways. He was much taller than she was- not as tall as Emmett, but taller than Edward or I- and his hair was as fair as the girl’s was dark. Unlike the beaming smile of the girl, the man’s face was reserved, almost stern, as he examined us carefully. Everything about his lean, muscular build implied strength and power and for a moment, as his amber eyes caught mine, I had to suppress the icy sense of fear crawling down my spine.

Still looking at him I felt suddenly disconcerted as my fear seemed to dissipate, and a quiet sense of calm replaced it. I shook my head and scowled at the intruders.

Carlisle stepped forward. “Hello there. You’ll forgive us if we were a little surprised to see you. We don’t often have visitors, and others of our kind…well.” He smiled at them. “I’m…”

“Carlisle Cullen, I know,” the girl interrupted with a giggle. “And Esme and Rosalie…where are Edward and Emmett?” She looked around as though expecting them to come through the door at any minute.

“Not at home just at present,” Carlisle said courteously, although I could detect the increasing wariness in his tone.

“Oh, hunting,” the girl said in clear disappointment. “They won’t be back until this evening.”

 _Who is this girl, and how does she know so much about us?_ I shifted my weight slightly, wondering how Carlisle and Esme could be so relaxed in the face of this potential threat. _What do they want with us?_

The man laid his hand gently on the girl’s shoulder. The cuff slipped back over his wrist, and before he pulled it back into place I caught a glimpse of the scars that marred his stone vampire skin. Bumpy, crescent shaped scars...bite marks.

_Who the hell are you?_

As though he’d heard me the man gazed up at us steadily and said, “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Jasper Whitlock, and this is Alice. We’ve come a long way to see you. If you’d be prepared to listen to what Alice has to say, she can explain it all.” He spoke in a soft, Texan drawl and then smiled at the girl – Alice – with a surprisingly tender, crooked grin softening his granite face.

Alice kissed his fingers and then looked at up at Carlisle hopefully. Even I couldn’t help but respond to the eager friendliness of her, and Carlisle stepped back and invited them up to the porch with a broad smile. “Of course. Sit down and welcome.”

Alice bounded gleefully up the stairs, dragging Jasper with her, and settled herself comfortably on to the long bench seat. As though the two strangers were long-time friends invited to afternoon tea Carlisle and Esme sat in the chairs opposite them with easy smiles on their faces. Always the more suspicious member of the family, I leaned edgily against the porch railings and folded my arms defensively. I wished Emmett was home.

Alice’s eyes glowed as she smiled at us and clasped her hands together. “I don’t really know how to start,” she said at last, her voice high and clear. “I’ve been seeing you all for such a long time, I feel as though I know you. But you don’t know me at all.”

_Seeing us? Have you been spying? But how would we not know?_

 “Perhaps you should start from the start?” Jasper murmured.

“Yes,” Alice took a deep breath and then continued, meeting our eyes in turn as she spoke. “I became a vampire back in 1920. I woke alone, and I don’t know what happened before that. I don’t remember being human at all, or who changed me. But right from the moment I became conscious I began seeing things in my mind. Flashes of knowledge and visions of the future. I saw Jasper right away, and I knew that I would find him eventually and we would be together. And then I saw you.” Alice hesitated, her eyes begging Carlisle to understand. “I saw all of you…us…together. A family.” I saw her fists clench.

My own hands clenched in response. I didn’t like this at all. Who was this vampire to come in to _my_ family, claiming that visions told her we were hers?

Jasper touched her hand. “Alice found me about a year and a half ago,” he told us. “She told me about what she had seen and she taught me to hunt animals and live without feeding from humans, as she herself had been doing for some years. As she saw _you_ did.”

Carlisle leaned forward. “You saw that?”

“Not at the start,” Alice said, smiling at him. “I saw your eyes, I knew what you all looked like but I didn’t understand the visions then. I wasn’t sure at first about the time of it, you see- it took a little while before I understood that I could be seeing things from any point in the future. It was Garrett who told me about you hunting animals.”

“You know Garrett then?” Carlisle leaned back in his chair. From the look on his face I could tell he was intrigued, and I narrowed my eyes. I knew of Carlisle’s vampire friend Garrett, but I had never met him.

“I met him early on,” Alice explained. “He was the first vampire I ever met, fortunately for me because I was making something of a mess of things! All I had were my visions and my instincts. Garrett taught me about secrecy and blending in, and when I asked him if he knew you all he told me about you, Carlisle. He said you were alone when he’d seen you last, which was a few years before.”

“You said 1920?” Carlisle clarified. “Yes, of course it was only Edward and I then, and he didn’t meet Garrett until later.”

“I saw the others join you over time,” Alice’s eyes were sparkling, but her voice was gentle as she said to Esme. “I saw you…fall. And I saw Carlisle bite you, and I was so happy to know that you were together.”

Her eyes met mine, and I stared back, my eyes hard. _I don’t care what you ‘saw’, or what the hell these visions are…you don’t know anything about me and how I came to be here. Don’t you dare say that you do!_

“I saw you save Emmett from the bear,” she said softly. “I was so lonely all those years that I was waiting, but it comforted me to know that you all had each other. I have wanted to come home to you so much! I know that you might find it hard to understand just yet, but we’re all going to be a family, and it’s going to be so good for everyone.”

Carlisle and Esme smiled at the newcomers, but I clicked my tongue in irritation and snapped at them, “You believe this story?”

Carlisle raised his eyebrows at me, and I rolled my eyes impatiently. Did he not see how ridiculous this situation was? “And really,” I went on aggressively. “If it’s true, does that make it any better? Isn’t it bad enough having Edward around eavesdropping on everyone’s private thoughts? Do we really need _another_ psychic in the house?”

_Can’t I have any privacy, ever?_

“Rosalie,” Esme murmured in gentle reprimand.

Alice giggled at me, seemingly unoffended by my less than friendly reaction. “I’m not like Edward,” she said to me cheerfully. “I can’t read your mind, I just see what you’re doing to do, and the visions change if you change your mind…you won’t mind me once you’re used to it. Well, you won’t mind me _much_ ,” she corrected herself, a little unwillingly. She looked back to Carlisle and Esme beseechingly. “You do believe me? We can stay?”

Carlisle looked at me and Esme, but despite the look of disapproval on my face he nodded at Alice and Jasper. “We’d be happy to have you stay. I’m not sure I fully understand your visions Alice, but it will be a pleasure to get to know you both.”

“You won’t be sorry!” Alice exclaimed joyfully. “I’ve seen it, we’re meant to be a family, all of us.” She squeezed Jasper’s hand. “Our room is at the top of the stairs.”

 _At the top of the stairs…_ I couldn’t stop the laughter that suddenly bubbled up. “That’s Edward’s room,” I said.

Alice looked at me innocently, a spark of mischief in her eyes. “Not anymore,” she giggled, and I laughed too and there was, just for an instant, a moment of connection with this unnerving vampire who claimed we were going to be family.

“What about you, Jasper?” Carlisle asked, leaning towards the good looking man who had so far said very little. “How did you come to find Alice?”

Jasper clasped his hands together in his lap. Even with his dark trousers and plain shirt buttoned to the neck and wrists I could see the subtle movement of his lean, powerful muscles as he braced himself, and I wished that Carlisle had not been so quick to accept them. This vampire man exuded an unmistakeable air of menace, and who knew how safe it would be to have him here?

“I was changed when I was nineteen in 1863, during the War,” he said quietly, the southern accent very clear in his tone. “I was a Major in the Texas cavalry when I was waylaid by a vampire named Maria, who changed me. She wanted soldiers for the war she was waging in the South…I became her second in command. I trained her newborns and took care of business for her.” He met Carlisle’s eyes squarely. “I lived a lifestyle very different to this one.”

Carlisle nodded thoughtfully. “We are the exception, I know that. I have heard a great deal about the southern vampire wars. You were lucky to escape the carnage.”

Jasper shrugged. “Yes, I had luck…and sometimes you become a bigger monster that those you fight against.”

It was like he spoke directly to me. _Becoming a bigger monster than those you fight against…_ Unbidden the memories of my brutal revenge rose in my mind and although I kept my face expressionless I could not stop my hands curling into fists. Oh, I knew well about becoming a monster… _what have you done in your long vampire life to know about that, Jasper Whitlock?_

“I had more than luck though,” Jasper went on slowly. “I have an ability that served me well in those circumstances. I am able to influence the emotions of those near me, so when I was working with the newborns I could calm them or rile them up as needed.”

I remembered the unusual way my fear had melted away into calm and felt a sudden stab of fury as I realised how he’d manipulated me earlier. “You were doing it to us before, weren’t you? When I first came out I felt…well, then I was just curious and calm.” I glared at him challengingly.

He met my angry gaze without flinching. “Yes. I would not have Alice hurt for anything, and I wasn’t sure how you would react to her story.” A small smile flitted across his face- amusement or admiration, I couldn’t tell. “I could feel that you would defend your own if you felt threatened. You are…fierce, Rosalie.”

Flipping my hair back over my shoulder, I ignored Carlisle and Esme’s amused chuckles and stared at Jasper through narrowed eyes as he continued with his story.

 “I feel people’s emotions too,” he explained slowly. “It has been difficult to live with, and it made feeding from humans into a nightmare as I would take in all their fear and rage with their blood at the death.”

He turned to look at Alice, and the smile that lit up his face transformed him. I knew that look, because I had seen it in the way Carlisle looked at Esme from the first moment I saw them together, it was a look I saw in Emmett’s eyes every time he smiled at me…this vampire man loved that vampire girl beyond all that was sane and reasonable.

“I left the south and came north with a friend of mine, looking for a new way of life, not even sure if it was possible for me. And then I found Alice,” Jasper said, his voice lighter and his eyes gentle as he looked at her. “She changed everything for me; she introduced me to the animal blood diet and she told me about the family the two of us would have.” His voice dropped. “But more than that she was just herself, and her emotional world made me feel whole again. It gave me hope, and so for all it felt crazy I took the hand of an almost stranger and went with her.”

“I find abstaining from humans difficult,” Jasper added abruptly, turning back to face Carlisle a moment later. “I have tried for many months, but there have been several incidents and I am not fully confident in my ability to maintain control. I don’t wish you to feel that we have tried to hide anything from you.” His face was taut as he waited for judgement.

Carlisle shook his head sympathetically. “We understand the difficulties.”

“Who would understand more than us?” Esme said, and I could hear by the tone in her voice that she had fallen under their spell. “We have all struggled at times. Some of us more than others,” she added with a rueful smile.

Carlisle took her hand with a wink. “You know you’ve come so far! Emmett too, he’s done admirably.” He looked at Jasper. “Esme is right- who would understand more than us? It takes time to develop control, and there is no censure within our family for any of us who might stumble on the path."

“See?” Alice whispered to him contentedly, stroking his large hand with her small one and giving him a smile that lit up her face. “Isn’t it just like I said?” 


	3. Visions

“I’m intrigued by your visions Alice,” Carlisle said. “How do they work?”

Always the scientist! I thought. But I too wanted to know exactly what this strange girl saw in her mind’s eye, even though just thinking about _another_ smug, psychic know-it-all in the house made me want to kick someone.

“I don’t really understand that myself,” Alice said cheerfully. “I see it in my mind, what’s going to happen…of course sometimes people change their minds and then the visions change. And sometimes I’ll see things that don’t make any sense in the context of where I am at the time, and I have to wait until something else happens that give them meaning. And of course, sometimes I just don’t look for the right things!” She gave a sudden giggle. “I saw meeting you, but I never looked to see if everyone would be here so I didn’t know that Emmett and Edward would be gone. They’ll be back this evening though.” For a moment her smile faltered and was replaced by a wondering frown. “Emmett’s clothes are completely destroyed…goodness, what does he _do_ when he hunts?”

I gave a sudden, genuine belly laugh. Oh, my impossible man and his carelessness with his clothes! “Now I _know_ you’re telling the truth,” I snorted. “Goodness knows Emmett’s the only vampire any of us know that eats like such a savage when they should know better!”

Carlisle and Esme, both well acquainted with Emmett’s uniquely messy hunting style, laughed with me.

I hesitated for a moment, not wishing to be rude, but I’d never been one to hold back my true thoughts and so I caught Jasper’s eye and said to him frankly, “I don’t like the idea that you can manipulate my emotions.”

He wasn’t offended. With an apologetic nod he said, “I can understand that. If it’s any comfort to you, I don’t do it merely for my own amusement or benefit. I kept you all calm earlier because I felt it was safer, but I have not been sitting here influencing you all along. I can’t say I’m not a little uncomfortable at the idea of living with someone who can read my mind,” he added, a little diffidently.

“Join the club,” I muttered. “I’ve been doing it for seventeen years and I’m still not comfortable.” Edward’s telepathy had always been a thorn in my side.

Alice threw up her hands. “Well, if you two have _quite_ finished being so pessimistic about everything!”

 _Excuse me!_ I was so astounded that she’d spoken to me like that that I couldn’t even think of anything to say.

“It’s not as bad as you think, Jasper,” Carlisle said with a smile. “Edward doesn’t make a habit of listening in to everything, and he’s very discreet with what he does hear. He can’t help it, any more than you can help feeling the emotions that surround you. Actually, Edward’s skills have been very useful on several occasions. It can be helpful to have someone who knows what others are thinking when you’re trying to blend in to the human world and avoid trouble.”

“It’s okay,” Alice beamed. “We’ll all be friends once everyone gets used to things.”

“Of course we will,” Esme said. “Now, would you like to take your things inside and get settled? I suppose if you take Edward’s room we can work with that.”

Jasper rose to his feet and collected the suitcase and a battered old duffel bag. I wondered what they carried with them as Alice skipped over to the front door and grinned at Esme. “You don’t have to get up,” she chirped gaily. “I know the way. Thank you so much for listening to me and taking us in like this!”

“You’re very welcome,” Esme answered, sounding slightly bemused at the speed at which Alice seemed to be making herself at home.

I said nothing as I leaned against the porch rail and watched the two of them enter the house, listening to the sound of their footsteps ascending the wooden staircase to Edward’s room.

“Well, that wasn’t quite what I was expecting to happen on my day off!” Carlisle said with a humorous grin at Esme. “What do you think, my love?”

Esme smiled at him affectionately. “It certainly was a surprise to see them come walking out of the forest! But Carlisle, the things she says she sees about us all being a family together…do you really believe she is telling the truth?”

Carlisle shrugged. “I’ve seen enough in my life to know that anything is possible. Edward is able to read minds…is it so much more unbelievable that this girl should have premonitions? We’ve built this family from some rather disparate parts thus far- I confess to being rather intrigued by her visions and how they may be fulfilled.”

“Imagine a family of seven,” Esme said wonderingly. “There’s not a coven outside of Volterra with so many members.”

Carlisle chuckled. “It’s certainly not something I ever expected. After I changed Rosalie I swore I’d never do it again, and although I broke that vow when Emmett came along that was done in rather exceptional circumstances.” He winked at me. “I didn’t think that situation would really arise again, and I couldn’t imagine too many vampires happy to live our particular lifestyle!”

I couldn’t believe how casually they were taking this. I wasn’t against the idea of getting to know new vampires…more than anyone else in the family I chafed against the boredom of really having only the same four people for company! Someone new was always interesting, and could be a fun diversion. But… _family?_

“So that’s it then?” I said incredulously. “They just walk up to the door and she tells you that she’s a fortune teller and they think we’re all family, and you just _let them right in the door?_ Are you mad?”

“Rosalie,” Esme began, but I cut her off with a furious shake of my head.

“You’re too trusting!”

“You don’t believe she’s telling the truth?” Carlisle’s voice was more interested than reproving as he gave me his attention.

“I don’t care if she is or not!” I countered. “I don’t want another psychic in my home messing with my head! And we don’t know anything about them but what they’ve told us…who knows what their real purpose is?”

“They seemed lovely. Not everyone is out to hurt others, Rosalie,” Esme said gently.

“Well, we don’t know that, do we?” I hissed. “The least you could have done was waited for Emmett and Edward to get back before inviting two strangers to move in!”

Carlisle’s lip quirked with a barely hidden smile. “For someone who objects to Edward listening to thoughts out of her head, you seem rather keen for him to do it to others.”

“That’s different!” I shouted furiously. “This is about being _safe_ , not about Edward being nosy! We have no reason to trust them, Carlisle!”

_And I have spent years learning how to feel safe again Carlisle, I have spent years trying to unravel that ball of furious terror that lives in my heart and replace it with faith. I have learned to feel safe even in this world that has shown me too much of the darkness, and I cannot lose that now!_

 “I believe Alice was telling the truth about her visions,” Carlisle said quietly. “And Jasper made no efforts to hide things from us that don’t paint him in a very positive light…I believe their intentions are sincere, Rosalie.”

“And don’t forget Rosalie, you were a stranger once too,” Esme interjected. “We’ve created a family from strangers…maybe they are meant to be part of it too.”

“I’m not saying they’re not,” I snapped, my voice tight with frustration. “For what it’s worth I do believe she sees things- goodness knows I’ve seen enough of this vampire world freak show to believe in anything! I’m just saying that we need to be careful!”

I flung my hair back and slammed into the house, only to come up short at the sight of Alice, poised halfway down the stairs, her golden eyes wide. “Were you listening?” I snarled.

“I did hear you,” she admitted calmly. “You’re right that you have no real reason to trust us right now. But I’m _not_ lying and I _have_ seen what I told you about. I’m just asking that you hold back on judgement for a little while. That’s all.”

Sighing, I shrugged wearily. It was not that I was against Jasper and her being here, not at all. It was just the lack of caution that had me so wound up! But Emmett and Edward would be back later, I reminded myself, and I could take care of myself until then. “Did you want something?” I asked stiffly.

“I was just wondering what I should do with Edward’s things? Should I move them somewhere?” Alice looked at me inquiringly.

“How about the doghouse?” I muttered sourly.

Esme entered the house behind me then, and she giggled as she heard me. “Oh Rose! Don’t pout darling, Emmett will be back soon.” She patted my arm and grinned at Alice. “Rosalie is just cross that Edward took Emmett away hunting for a few days.”

I rolled my eyes dramatically. “Yes, yes, I’m sulking…But they didn’t have to go so far away. And it’s not like we _have_ a dog, and that little house is out there waiting, just perfect for Edward…” I gazed innocently at Esme, and then flicked a brief glance at Alice, and all three of us laughed.

“I think we’ll move Edward’s things out to the garage,” Esme said thoughtfully. “We can probably turn the back sitting room into a room for Edward, but we’ll need to do something with all the furniture in there first…”

I thought of my lovely, spacious garage, with everything arranged just as I liked it and kept pristine, and I moaned. “Not in my garage Esme!”

She raised her eyebrows at me. “I suppose we could find room in your bedroom for some of the boxes then?”

“Ugh, never mind,” I sighed. There was no way I was having anything of Edward in my bedroom, not even a box of books! I trailed upstairs after Alice and into what had been Edward’s room. At our entrance Jasper rose to his feet and nodded courteously. “Miss Rosalie.”

“Just Rosalie is fine,” I said, a little awkwardly. Not that I didn’t appreciate the gentlemanly manners, but it was a little too formal for home. It brought to mind the way Emmett, newly born to this life and stumbling through the changes in both body and circumstance it had meant for him, had called me ‘Miss Rosalie’ in his slurred southern drawl and my heart softened. “You were from Texas?” I said to Jasper.

“Born and raised,” he answered with his crooked grin. “Alice says you’ve always been a Yankee…from New York, she tells me?”

“Yes, I spent all my human life in New York,” I said briefly. “I’ve not spent much time down south.” There had been a brief interlude in Tennessee that came to a premature end after Emmett became one of us, but we preferred the cooler, cloudier climate of the northern states. I glanced suspiciously at Alice. “You really know all this from your…visions?”

Twirling around, the full skirt of her cherry printed dress flaring out around her, Alice clapped her hands and laughed. “Oh yes. I know lots of things, but it’s going to be so much more fun to be here with you all and see it all happening right in front of me!” On her tiptoes, she seized Jasper’s tie and pulled him towards her so she could kiss him, before she danced across the room to the stack of boxes. “Now come on, you two…we’ve got to get all of these boxes and things out of our room and fix it up for us.”

Thinking of Edward’s reaction to coming home and discovering all his possessions in the garage made me snicker, and I gave Alice the friendliest grin I could muster up and hefted up a pile of boxes. “Come on then. I’ll show you where in the garage to stack these- I don’t want them in my way.”


	4. Past and Future

I helped Alice and Jasper move Edward’s extensive book and record collection from what had been his bedroom, and store it all neatly in the garage. Carlisle and Esme’s old bedroom set had been put up in the attic when Esme redecorated after we moved in, but it was still in excellent condition so Carlisle brought it down and Alice insisted that it was just perfect for her and Jasper. When she began unpacking her suitcases, I bit back my curiosity about what they had brought with them and left the two of them alone in their room to settle in.

When the sun began sinking lower in the sky I found myself listening out for the return of Emmett and Edward. I heard Alice laughing as she sat on the porch to wait for them, Jasper sitting stiffly beside her, his eyes wary. Carlisle and Esme were relaxed as they sat together on the porch loveseat but I paced restlessly, my eyes constantly scanning the edge of the forest that grew up nearly to the house.

_Come home Emmett. It’s all changing, and I need you._

My heart jumped when he broke from the cover of the trees. He was running, and I barely had time for the smile to spread across my face before he had bounded up the steps and caught me up in his arms, crushing me against him in a bear hug. “What the hell’s going on here?” he demanded. Without waiting for an answer he ducked his face and looked at me intently. “You okay, baby?”

I breathed in the smell of him- soap and river water and forest overlaying the essential scent of Emmett, and felt some of my tension ease. “Yes, I’m fine. That’s Alice and Jasper, they’re…” I didn’t finish. I wasn’t exactly sure _what_ Alice and Jasper were to us at that point.

Edward strode up the steps, sounding half amused as he said, “I told you there was nothing to worry about Emmett.” He was quite relaxed as he took in the group on the porch, Alice bouncing in her seat with excitement as she beamed at him.

“I’m so happy to see you!”

Edward raised his eyebrows at her. “Very loud,” he murmured, in response to something from her head, and Alice giggled.

“Care to explain? Anyone?” Emmett asked plaintively, easing his grip on me and running a hand through his curly hair.

As he pulled slightly away from me I became aware that the tattered remnants of his clothes were damp and the water was soaking into my clothes. Irritated, I pushed him away. “You’re all wet,” I said in disapproval.

“You told me not to come home smelling like an animal!” Emmett exclaimed. “I had a bath in the river. I even used soap…smell!” He caught his hands loosely in my hair and pushed my face into his chest.

 _Oh, you smell good…I missed this._ My nose against his chest I breathed in, and then smirked up at him and bit. My teeth went through the threadbare shirt like a razor and scraped across his skin; I heard him growl and felt the rumble of it deep in his chest as his hands tightened almost imperceptibly in my hair.

Emmett looked down at me and then over at Alice and Jasper with indecision. “There’s no drama with you two here?” he asked hopefully, as I snaked my tongue out and licked his chest where no one could see.

“Oh no,” Alice said brightly. “We’ve just moved in…I can explain it all.”

“Okay. I’m just gonna go get some clothes on that don’t have the ass out of them. Don’t talk til I get back.” Emmett walked backwards through the door, and since his fist was still wrapped in my hair I had little choice but to follow him.

“Dragging me off by my hair now?” I said in a superior voice. “You’re such a caveman Emmett.”

Emmett grinned unapologetically as he pushed me into our room. “You said you’d welcome me home,” he said in a low voice, and before I could blink he had stripped off the damp shreds of his clothes and growled as he bore me backwards on to the bed. “This is the welcome I want.” He kissed me hard, then skimmed his lips across my throat, one hand still tangled in my hair and the other bunching my skirt up between us as his knees pressed in between mine. “I love you pretty girl…didn’t like coming home to find some other man here with you.”

“You know it’s only you,” I murmured into his mouth between kisses. “Just you Emmett…you’re all I want. They’re together anyway, Jasper and Alice.”

“Well, that’s good, that’s… _damn_ Rosa-girl!” Emmett had pushed my skirt up to my hips and discovered what I _wasn’t_ wearing underneath in anticipation of his return. “Now that’s a welcome home…sweet Christ I love you!” Then there weren’t any words, just muffled sounds of want and pleasure as Emmett and I came together and used our bodies to express what we didn’t have words for.

Sometimes it still embarrassed me, how fiercely I wanted him and how desperately I needed him. I was so self-controlled when it came to all my other desires and yet all it took was a word from Emmett, a look, a touch…and I came undone. It was as though nothing else in the world mattered when it was just the two of us together; and I could never have enough of the overwhelming feeling of love and safety and joyous pleasure that I got from being with him.

“I missed you,” I said quietly, as I watched him dress.

“Oh baby doll, I missed you too,” Emmett yanked on a pair of pants and snatched a shirt from the wardrobe. “And it looks like it was all happening here while I was gone…damn it, they’ve started talking without me!” Still buttoning his shirt and with his feet bare, Emmett ducked out the window onto the porch. “I told you not to talk til I came back!” he said, aggrieved. “Jesus, I’m the one who needs explanations in words.”

I rapidly smoothed down my clothes and hair and swung myself out the window after him, following him over to the group who were all seated comfortably.

Jasper rose to his feet at our approach, and Emmett grinned at him amiably as the two of them shook hands. “Good to meet you,” he said happily. “Emmett McCarty Cullen, whatever…and you’re Jasper? And Alice? So where’d you come from? What are you doing here? Damn, I go hunting for a couple of days and everything changes.” Emmett sprawled out in one of the armchairs and flashed his dimples at me endearingly as he held out his arms towards me. “Come here baby…I missed you.”

“We’ve moved in,” Alice said gaily, as I settled myself on Emmett’s lap. “Thank you for giving up your room Edward, I do appreciate it!”

Emmett laughed heartily, and Edward chuckled too, with an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders.

“We’re all going to be a family together,” Alice said. “I was by myself for a long time, just moving about here and there, but I always saw visions of you. Of Jasper by himself, and of all the rest of you together. I see the future you see…I saw Jasper and knew I had to find him, and I knew that we would come here and join you. So we did that, and now here we are!”

I watched Edward listen to Alice’s story, but his smooth face gave away nothing. I wished I could ask him what he heard in her head…was it the same amazing story she was telling us with words?

Emmett had no such reservations. Alice’s future telling abilities both intrigued and excited him. “No way!” he exclaimed. “You see the future? Awesome…that’s gonna fuck up Edward’s cheating heart when we play games.”

Even I had to laugh at that. Such an impossible man-child Emmett could be sometimes!

“Jasper is an empath,” Alice went on a moment later. “He can sense the emotions of people around him, and influence them too.”

Emmett frowned and stroked my hair absently. I could see him thinking about this particular gift and assessing how it might manifest.

“Do it,” Alice said softly to Jasper. “Do fear.”

Even though I knew he was about to do it, nothing could have prepared me for the depth and intensity of feeling that Jasper was able to raise in me with nothing more than a look from his cool yellow eyes. Fear crept into my heart like a smothering vine, sending tendrils of terror curling through my soul, covering every vestige of happiness and security in bleak, horror filled darkness. Emmett’s beloved, steady presence at my back did nothing as the fear tore open old memories and all I could think of was the last time I had felt like this, in the cold and dark and pain of that alley…

_No! I will never be back there, not ever…I am strong and fierce and they aren’t ever going to hurt me again!_

“Stop it!” Without even realising it I was on my feet as the fear turned to rage and I glared at Jasper. I saw him flinch at my fury and the fear disappeared as quickly as it had arisen, and I still wanted to kill him. “Don’t you _ever_ do that to me again!”

Jasper looked at me helplessly as an uncomfortable silence descended. I realised I was trembling and forced my body to still as Emmett wrapped his arms around me and drew me back onto his lap. I turned away from the others and let my hair fall forward to shield my expression as Emmett ran a hand down my back and looked at me anxiously.

“It’s okay, Rosa girl…it’s not that night,” he said, his voice low and tender and quiet enough that it was only for my ears. “I’m right here with you. You’re safe baby, I promise.”

 _You know me so well._ I pressed my face against his broad shoulder and felt comforted, even as shame tightened my belly. I’d let them see my fear and shown weakness… _I hate them._

“That was something else!” Emmett said to Jasper, impressed. “And you can do anything like that?”

“Any emotions,” Jasper responded quietly. “The effect I’m able to have on anyone last only as long as I’m close by and making the effort. I’m sorry Rosalie,” he added slowly. “I won’t do that to you again. I just wanted Emmett to understand.”

I raised my head and brushed back my hair to look at him. Jasper’s face was open and honest as he looked at me, concern clear in his serious face and dark golden eyes. There was no mockery or derision or sneer. I nodded stiffly. “I’m sorry I overreacted. I don’t like to feel afraid.”

Before he or I could say anymore, Edward gave a sudden start of surprise and said incredulously to Alice, “You saw _Emmett?_ Human Emmett?”

 _He’s mine!_ A wave of jealousy rocked me, and I gripped Emmett’s shirt possessively as he stared at Alice blankly.

“You saw me human? When?” He shook his curly head in bewilderment. “I don’t get it…you’ve known about us _how_ long?”

Alice trilled a laugh. “I’ve known you all in visions for thirty years! I was made vampire in 1920, although I don’t remember anything before that. It’s been such a long wait…that’s why I need you to forgive me for being overly familiar. I feel like I’ve known you all along. I met you when you were nine years old Emmett. Do you remember one night the carnival came to town, and you went with your brothers but they took all the money and then you met a fortune teller…”

Edward laughed explosively, but I was focussed on Emmett as his face creased with the effort of remembering, and then suddenly relaxed into his familiar broad grin. “That was _you!_ Holy mother of god, I _do_ remember that!” His body shook with laughter. “I won a bow and arrows, and you fed me my own damn bodyweight in carnival food and I got to have a go at _everything._ Rose, it was like the best fucking night of my whole life up til then. My brothers had to take me with them to the carnival, but soon as we got there they ditched me and then I met the fortune teller – her – and I got to do everything for free. Shit, my brothers were so jealous…but it was worth it, even when I puked about ten times while we were walking home I still thought it was worth it.” Emmett’s eyes were sparkling as he hugged me exuberantly.

“And you told me I knew nothing when I told you your fortune!” Alice chided. She looked pointedly at me, her eyes arched provocatively. “Didn’t I tell you she’d be beautiful?”

Emmett laughed. “You told me I’d go all over the world and live in a whole lot of places…you never said I’d be a freaking vampire when I did it!” Chuckling, he cupped my face in his hands and looked at me tenderly. “She told me I’d marry the most beautiful girl in the world,” he said, his voice low and his eyes only for me. “And juts look how right she was about that.”

 _Oh my beloved...I can’t tell you what you mean to me._ I laid my hand over his on my cheek and tried to smile.

“I did tell him that,” Alice surveyed me and Emmett with satisfaction. “He told me I knew nothing and he was going to be a cowboy and never get married.” She shook her head as our laughter rang out.

Emmett gave me a self-deprecating smile, and I felt my eyes soften. Whatever else I might have thought about Alice’s visions, I was fiercely glad that that one had come true. What my vampire life would be like without Emmett didn’t bear thinking about.

A cowboy, indeed!


	5. Maybe Friends and Sisters

It’s amazing to think of,” Carlisle said, awed. “Did you see them all when they were human?”

Alice shook her head quickly. “Not exactly. It wasn’t until Emmett was right there that my intuition told me it was him- that I was seeing the vampire Emmett I’d seen in visions as a child in front of me. He looked very much the same as he does now…just smaller! Once I’d met him and knew him I was able to see him as a human much more easily.” For a moment her smile faltered. “I saw big things, sometimes,” she said hesitantly.

I caught the way her eyes skipped over me, and I felt the burn of shame and anger in my gut as I wondered what she might have seen of my human life and death. It was a long time since I had felt so vulnerable at home with the family as I did then, and I didn’t like it.

“I never saw enough to know where you were,” Alice added softly. “I wasn’t even sure who was still human and when. I didn’t see enough, or understand enough, of any of the human visions to change anything.” She looked at Edward for a long moment, and when she spoke again her voice rang with conviction. “Sometimes I can change things, but I couldn’t have changed this. All of us, being here…being what we are…I couldn’t have changed this.”

I didn’t want to keep talking about Alice’s visions, and what she had seen and might know. I had always hated Edward reading my mind and resented him knowing too much, and now here were two others gifted with extra senses that enabled them to effortlessly bypass the guard I had fought so hard to keep around myself!

“So what now?” I asked flatly. “Now that they’re here…what about school? We were supposed to start tomorrow.”

Edward shrugged carelessly. “That doesn’t matter. We can put it off for a bit.”

I scowled in irritation. Of course he wouldn’t care, he hadn’t wanted to go to high school anyway. Edward much preferred college classes, or studying on his own at home, and had agreed to attending high school again only because it meant we could stay in the same place for several years and everyone else wanted that.

“Jasper and I will go too,” Alice offered immediately, and then gave an excited squeak as she clapped her hands. “It will be fun! I’ve never been to school, at least not that I remember.” She glanced at me hopefully, but I didn’t respond.

“We’ll need to think up some kind of explanation for five of you,” Carlisle said doubtfully. “When I spoke to the principal I said I was bringing my three adopted children to enrol…perhaps we can say that two of you are relations of Esme?”

“Perhaps a niece or nephew?” Esme, a creative and skilled liar after all this time, looked at us thoughtfully. “Living with us so they can attend school?”

 “Rose and Jasper could be brother and sister,” Edward suggested. “They’re both tall and fair- more alike than any of the rest of us, at any rate. They could be Esme’s niece and nephew, twins I suppose if we say they’re the same age. If Emmett and Alice and I are your adopted children, which we’ve done before, that will account for five of us.” He looked at Alice and Jasper in concern. “If we’re _sure_ about school though? It won’t matter if we don’t attend, or even if all of us don’t attend.”

“Oh, Jasper and I will be fine!” Alice said confidently. “We’ve been playing human quite well for some time now, and I’m sure we can manage.” She gripped Jasper’s hand tightly and nodded resolutely. Beside her, Jasper’s face was inscrutable.

“Have you been to school before?” Esme inquired.

“I don’t know,” Alice shrugged, seemingly unbothered.

Jasper’s face relaxed slightly into a wry smile. “I suspect it’s going to be rather different to the military academy I was attending in 1860. Probably not a great deal like the tutor who attempted to drill in some knowledge and discipline in the home schoolroom before that, either.”

Emmett laughed. “Damn, you’re older than all of us except Carlisle. What about you, pipsqueak, how old are you?” he added in Alice’s direction. Under my hair, his fingers were stroking the curve of my neck and shoulder.

Looking a little miffed at being called pipsqueak, Alice shrugged again. “I don’t know. I don’t remember being human, so I don’t know how old I was when I was changed. But I was changed in 1920, so it’s been thirty years.”

In 1920 I had been five years old. For thirteen years I’d been human while Alice had been a vampire with visions.

 “Huh,” Emmett looked thoughtful. “So you were changed before Esme and me and Rose then.”

“I think for school purposes we might say you’re the same age as Edward,” Carlisle said, going back to the school problem. “If you two enter as fifteen year old freshmen, Emmett and Jasper and Rosalie can be sophomores. We’ll need to do up some birth certificates.”

“Alice Cullen,” she said enraptured, and her face split into a grin. “I’ve never had two names before!”

“I want to keep my name,” I said flatly. I knew I was being petty and childish. But the family was the foundation of my security here in this vampire world, and Alice and Jasper’s arrival had shaken that badly. I was clinging to the familiar.

“Rosalie,” Esme began, throwing a quick glance at Carlisle.

Jasper held up his hand to stop her, and looked at me with a depth of sympathy and understanding that I wouldn’t have expected in his eyes. “If we’re to be brother and sister I’ll use your name too, if you’d prefer that. I can be known as Jasper…?”

“Hale,” Esme supplied quickly. She smiled at him gratefully, and Jasper nodded back courteously.

“It doesn’t matter to me. I haven’t been known by my family name since I was turned really,” Jasper said quietly.

“Good.” Without looking at anyone I rose to my feet and stepped gracefully off the porch. I wanted to get away, to think over what had happened and come to grips with these new changes. I was uneasy with the idea of Alice’s visions, and I didn’t like the way Jasper looked at me, as though by sensing my emotions he could see too deeply inside me.

As I always did, I went to the garage in search of peace. The sight of Edward’s boxes stacked neatly along the far wall did nothing to calm my nerves, and with an irritated exclamation I wriggled out of my skirt and sweater and dropped my stockings and shoes in little puddle on the concrete floor, swapping them for my comfortable, grease stained overalls. It was only once I was on my back underneath the car with my hair bunched together and pillowed under my head, with the familiar smells of grease and metal and gas in my nose that I sighed and felt myself relax.  

It was a dim and enclosed world under the car. I checked the brake lines and the suspension, but there wasn’t really anything that needed fixing. Since I’d taught myself car maintenance back in the thirties I’d kept all our vehicles in immaculate condition, and the Cadillac I was lying beneath was a recent gift from Carlisle to Esme and still looked brand new. I wondered if Esme would let me drive it to school on Monday.

School. I sighed a little, frowning into the gloom as I thought about Alice’s blithe decision to attend school with us. More than anything she had said, it was the choice to go to school that had convinced me that she was serious about being part of our family. _No one_ else lived like the Cullen family. Even the other vampires we knew who shared our animal diet, our ‘cousins’ in Denali, looked upon the exceedingly human charade we lived with slightly sceptical amusement. But it was our eccentricities that bound us together, and this intruder wanted to share them…

_But she’ll be your sister…she might be your friend._

I tried to crush the thought before it could fully take shape in my mind. Of all the things I missed from my human life, of all the things that hurt to think about because I didn’t have them in my vampire life, the girlish friendships that had once been at the centre of my world loomed large. I had spent years at the centre of a close knit group of gossiping, giggling girls, always the prettiest and most popular, the one the other girls looked up to and admired and imitated …and then in one night Carlisle had given me the dark gift and I had lost it all. Since then all I had been able to do was watch from a distance, hiding the fierce ache in my heart as I watched all those human girls living the life that I had once enjoyed so much, and that now I could never fully embrace.

It wasn’t that I was lonely, not exactly. I had Emmett, who held my heart in his big hands and whose smiles and dimples and love filled my world. I had Edward, whose antagonism and friendship at least kept life interesting. I had Carlisle, with his steady, compassionate and thoughtful presence in my life. And I had Esme, who had become the older sister and mentor figure I never had and had needed so much in this strange vampire world. She was the closest thing I had to the girl friend I longed for, but there was a gap of age and experience between us that meant it was never going to be quite a friendship of equals.

Now suddenly here was this Alice, who _wanted_ to be my sister and I didn’t know what to do with her. I _wanted_ what she was offering, more desperately than I was willing to admit even to myself, but letting go enough to trust a stranger was impossible for me.

“Hi!” Alice’s chirpy voice broke into my thoughts, and then I saw her face, upside down and peering at me underneath the car. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing really.” I slid out from underneath and looked up at her. “I take care of the cars, so I was just checking on something but it’s fine.”

“I don’t know a thing about cars.” Alice stroked the shiny finish on the Cadillac gently. “I’ve never even driven…is it hard?”

“No.” I watched her for a minute as she rubbed the chrome and peered at herself in the mirror. “I could show you how one day, if you want,” I offered awkwardly, wondering if she’d even be tall enough to reach the pedals and see over the dash at the same time.

“I’d like that,” Alice said eagerly.

Turning away I slipped off my overalls and scrubbed my hands at the sink. I could feel her looking at me and I wished I’d thought to put my dress on rather than do this in my underwear like I usually did. I knew the way people reacted to this beautiful, perfect body of mine and I hated it. But when I flicked at glance at Alice as I pulled on my skirt and sweater she was simply perched on the hood of the car smiling at me happily, and I relaxed a little.

“I like your dress,” I said quietly. It was white, printed with cherries and full skirted, belted with a bright red leather belt that matched her shoes.

“Thank you. It’s my favourite,” she told me enthusiastically.

I touched my wrenches laid neatly in their places, taking comfort from the orderliness. “Are you really going to stay here?” I asked without looking at her. “And go to school?”

“Yes,” Alice said with conviction. “Jasper needs a family and I want you all. I know you think it all sounds crazy, but it’s going to work out Rosalie, we’re going to be friends and…”

“You can’t do _that_ then!” I said in exasperation, whirling to face her with my hands on my hips.

“What?” she said blankly. “I can’t do what?”

“You can’t tell me what I’m going to do, or think, or feel all the time!” I said tersely. “Not if you expect us to be friends!” Inwardly I cringed at the snarl in my tone. I hadn’t intended to sound so bitchy, but I loathed being told what to do and all Alice’s blithe pronouncements of what I was going to do was raising my hackles and bringing out my contrary side.

Alice’s face fell.

“I’m not saying we won’t be friends,” I said, making an effort to be reasonable. “But you have to let that kind of relationship just grow. You have to let it happen…you keep on telling me what I’m going to do or going to think and it comes across as manipulation and I hate that.”

Alice’s face was blank with astonishment. “I never considered that,” she said wonderingly. “I just…see how things turn out and then I get impatient.”

“I don’t like to be bullied into doing things,” I said, and it was as much a warning as information. “I like to make up my own mind.”

_Please try and understand. You probably think I’m horrible already, but I don’t mean to be…I’m doing the best I can._

“I understand. I shall try,” Alice promised. “It’s hard though, I was by myself for such a long time and I’ve always seen us – all of us – as a family. I want that so much and it all feels so real to me that I forget it’s not the same for everyone else.”

That I could understand. This family that we had created, Carlisle and Esme and Edward and Emmett and I…it had always formed the basis for my vampire world and I didn’t know how I would live my life without having it there. Oh, I had fought and whined and bitched and driven them all mad with my intransigence at times, but the family had always been there, the safe place in the tempest, a home in the wilderness. I tried to imagine being alone for as long as Alice had been, longing for a family, and I felt a stirring of sympathy for her.

 


	6. Always Yours

“I’m sorry if my bluntness offends you,” I said, in a friendlier tone. “I don’t mean it too. But you’re best served by honesty in this house – Emmett is as straight as an arrow and Edward knows everything anyway, so there’s no point in lying when he’s anywhere around!”

Alice giggled. “I’ll try and remember.” She tapped her thighs thoughtfully for a minute and regarded me seriously before she said quietly, “Will you look out for Jasper at school? He might find it difficult, and if you’re in his classes you could just…keep close to him?”

For an infinitesimal moment I hesitated. I was wary of strange men. The brutal betrayal of my human death and then the hidden menace of the powerful, deceptive vampires of Volterra had left their scars and Jasper Whitlock, with his air of restrained strength and his inscrutable face, in no way engendered trust within me. But I took a deep breath and pushed my anxiety away.

“The school is small here. It’s likely that Emmett and Jasper and I will all end up in most of the same classes.” I paused, thinking of her single suitcase and the duffel bag Jasper had carried with him. “Do you have clothes for school? My things won’t really fit you…” Not even close. I was probably close to a foot taller and had breasts, a waist and hips, none of which Alice seemed to possess to any great degree. “…but Esme sews well and if you need anything we can probably alter something of mine or hers. At least until we go shopping.”

“Oh, I don’t know!” Alice bounded off the car and seized my hand, ignoring the way I instinctively flinched. Apart from Emmett I didn’t like people to touch me, and _no one_ ever grabbed me by the hand and heedlessly dragged me along as Alice did then. Stunned into silence I let her lead me unresisting back to the house. “What are you going to wear? Can I see your things? Ohhhhh, you have a whole _closet_ of clothes…” She led us unerringly into my room and dove into my closet with a purr of pleasure. “Rosalie, you have so many beautiful things!”

Staring at her blankly as she tore through my closet like a whirlwind, exclaiming over everything, I fell back onto my bed with a thump. A second later Emmett and Jasper appeared in the doorway, and I raised my eyebrows at Jasper incredulously.

“Is she always like this?”

Alice backed out of the closet, her hands full of clothes and accessories, and grinned affectionately at Jasper as he answered me.

“More or less,” he drawled. “Of course, I never had a whole closet full of clothes for her to play in…”

“Far from it!” Alice said emphatically. “Really, it’s a good thing I’d seen you in my mind beforehand, because ordinarily I could _never_ have approached someone dressed as badly as you were that day!” She blew him a kiss and looked back into my closet with a disappointed sigh. “Sadly I don’t think I’ll even come _close_ to fitting in to your clothes Rosalie.”

Emmett drifted over to stand beside me and stroke my hair. I smiled at him, and then shared the smile with Alice. “Never mind,” I said. “We can go shopping tomorrow after school.”

“Any excuse,” Emmett teased me, and I giggled lightly and kissed him.

Alice flitted across to Jasper and wrapped her arms around his waist. “School and _shopping_ tomorrow!” she exclaimed gleefully. “Didn’t I say it would be good here Jasper? Didn’t I tell you?”

“You told me.” Jasper’s face was soft. “Thank you,” he said stiffly to me and Emmett, inclining his head. “We do appreciate the welcome you’ve given us…I understand that it cannot have been easy.”

“Just a bit of a surprise,” Emmett said easily. “There’s not so many vampires keen to live Carlisle’s vegetarian lifestyle you know, and it’s not like you run into girls who see the future every day of the week.”

Alice smiled broadly and winked at Emmett. “Speaking of seeing the future…” she said vaguely, and with a giggle she skipped from the room, pulling Jasper with her and slamming the door behind them.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said petulantly.

“She sees the future,” Emmett said with a wicked grin. “Maybe she saw this.”

And then I was enveloped in his arms, surrounded by the heat and strength and all-encompassing love of him as he kissed me and held me tight. I buried my face in the curve of his neck and breathed in hard, feeling myself settle once again just because of the proximity of him. I could feel his arousal, but rather than pulling off my clothes Emmett held me close in the crook of his elbow, my head tucked in against his shoulder, and looked down at me tenderly.

“Talk to me, pretty girl. I know you baby, I know that you’re not welcoming them with open arms…tell me about it.”

I restlessly played with a button on his shirt, unbuttoning it and then fastening it again. “It’s not that I _don’t_ want them here,” I said in a low voice. “But we don’t know anything about them Emmett. All we’ve got to go on is what they tell us.”

Emmett nodded thoughtfully. “Edward thinks they’re on the up and up. And Carlisle trusts them too, for what it’s worth.”

“I hate what they can do,” I muttered. “The way Alice just keeps telling me what I’m going to think and do…and him! I hate that Jasper can manipulate me like that!” I remembered the horrifying fear and shuddered.

Emmett’s arms tightened on my reflexively. “That was pretty damn freaky,” he admitted. “I’ve got to say that it _is_ a weird thing to be able to do. Not just being able to make people feel things, but to feel what they’re feeling.” He kissed the top of my head. “I can see why _you_ don’t like that…you keep too much hidden behind your pretty face, Rosa girl. You know, it’s okay if people know that you’re mad, or scared or…”

“Shut up,” I muttered, arching myself backwards until I could kiss him into silence. “No one needs to know how I feel. No one except you.”

Emmett groaned as he felt my breasts flatten out against his chest and my hand stroke his back underneath his shirt. “Are you trying to distract me?”

“Maybe.” I kissed the hollow of his throat and then paused, my hand on his chest. “Do you really remember her? From when you were human?”

“Yeah,” Emmett said reflectively. “I do remember that night. Not her so much honestly, I can’t picture her face, but I remember how happy I was. The carnival was like magic to me back then, all sparkle and glitter and shine… I remember going up on the Ferris wheel and getting to see damn near across the whole world, or at least that’s what I thought at the time.” He smiled at me ruefully. “You know we didn’t have much at home. A carnival would come to our town once every couple of years, and my brothers and I always saved up all our money for it, not that we could ever save that much! But then I went that night and met this girl who was like a fairy godmother, giving me everything. It was just so far out of my ordinary life that it’s stayed with me, even now.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe it was her- Alice – that she knew then what I’d become…it’s crazy.”

I said nothing as I continued playing with his buttons, my face lowered. A moment later Emmett tipped my chin up so he could look at me, his forehead creased in thought.

“It bothers you…” he said slowly. “Why?”

I swallowed down my jealousy. “Because I don’t like that she has something of you that I don’t have,” I whispered, hating myself for my own insecurity. “Because she knew a part of you, the human part, and I can never know it.”

“I’m not so different to the way I was,” Emmett murmured, nuzzling into my hair. “Not really…just don’t eat so much candy floss and hotdogs any more…” And he laughed, low and promising, into my ear. “And you knew me human too, remember. You’re the one who picked me up and saved my life. You saw me change.”

 _Oh, my beloved._ “You were so beautiful,” I whispered, pulling open Emmett’s shirt and tracing my hands across his bare chest. “And you _were_ different…just in little ways, but I remember them.” I pressed a kiss against his collarbone, feeling his cool perfect skin against my lips and remembering the slightly rougher, blood slicked skin of the human.

“I kissed you here,” I murmured. “Your skin was tanned from the sun and you had a scratch, just up here on your jaw….” I kissed the place softly. “…like you’d cut yourself shaving maybe a day or two before. Your hands had callouses and they were dirty from being outside hunting.” I caressed them, a small half smile on my face. “Your skin was rough over your knuckles and your fingernails were down to the quick…I knew you must be a fighter and that you bit your nails.”

Emmett’s eyes were dark and he licked his lip slowly as he looked at me. “Tell me more,” he said hoarsely.

I ran my fingertips slowly up his arm. “You had a big scar that went right from your wrist up to your elbow. It was thick and knotted and faded pink, like it had been there for a long time.” I traced my lips along the path I remembered the scar taking. “You’ve never told me how you did it though.”

“I don’t know,” Emmett was barely breathing. “I don’t remember being human like you do, Rosa girl.”

“Your nose was sunburned and freckled, and your hair looked like you’d just hacked if off yourself with a pair of blunt scissors. There was the shadow of a bruise on your shoulder from the kickback of the shotgun, and you had a chip in your tooth.” Stretched out beside each other on the bed we were eye to eye, our breaths mingling. I was acutely aware of every part of his body that was touching mine. “You spoke like a redneck,” I whispered shakily. “Sounded just like some uneducated backwoods hunter… _and I wanted you more than I’d ever wanted anything before…_ ”

Emmett made an inarticulate noise and then for some time neither of us spoke, not with words, as he moved over and around and inside me until my world was full of nothing but the sight and taste and feel of him, that once-human man that I had carried home and demanded Carlisle make mine. He loved me, and his big hard body and worshipping eyes and mumbled noises gave me all the reassurance I needed then. I was his and I was loved…no matter who came into our lives or whatever might have happened before.

We filled the night with each other and the pure, abandoned pleasure of being together. Only when the early morning light began filtering in through the window did we rest, Emmett sprawled across the bearskin rug with me wrapped in his arms.

“ _Uneducated,”_ he scoffed, in a low voice, bumping his forehead into mine. “I might have been a backwoods redneck, but I taught you a thing or two, Princess.”

I squirmed against him. Oh yes, I had learned more lessons from Emmett than from anyone else who had ever come into my life…possibly more than he had ever intended teaching.

I rose to my knees and took my hairbrush from the dresser. Before I could begin running it through my hair Emmett sat up and took it. “Let me do that.”

I sat on the rug, Emmett behind me brushing the tangles out of my hair with gentle strokes of the brush. “School today,” he said thoughtfully. “Hey, at least this new story we’ve made up to account for five of us in the family means I don’t have to pretend to be your brother anymore.”  His hands reached around me and cupped my breasts as he nuzzled into the back of my neck. “You’re got to admit _that’s_ a good thing.”

“You’re still my adopted cousin or something,” I murmured.

“Doesn’t count.” Emmett kissed the nape of my neck and went back to brushing my hair. “You can still be my girl and all those high school boys can keep their damned eyes and dirty minds to themselves.” He chuckled. “I’ll give you my id bracelet and we can go steady.”

I laughed. “You don’t have an id bracelet. I’ll have to find a boy who has one to go steady with.”

“Hey!” Emmett grabbed me and wrestled me back to the ground. “Don’t even joke about that, Rosa girl!”

I laughed and flipped him over to land on his back on the floor with a furniture rattling thump, sitting down hard on his belly. “I’m just teasing you.” Leaning forward I brushed my lips across his. “You really don’t have to worry.” I slid the gold wedding band and ruby and diamond engagement ring off my finger, and then took Emmett’s hand and removed his wedding band too, holding the glittering circles in my palm and looking at them ruefully. “You already gave me your ring…and your name if I want it…and everything else I ever needed. You don’t need to see me wearing your bracelet to know that I’m yours.”

 


	7. Starting School

I frowned at my reflection in the mirror as I brushed my hair back into a ponytail and wrapped an elastic band around it, then twitched my pink sweater into place. My hands felt oddly naked without my rings, and I looked at them on the dresser a little regretfully, before I fastened my Cullen pendant around my neck. I added the amber bracelet that was the first gift Emmett had ever given me and then made a face at myself and stepped quickly out into the house.

I found Emmett in the living room, reading a newspaper which he tossed aside with a grin when he saw me. “Hey baby doll. You look pretty today.”

“Thank you.” I let him pull me down onto his lap, my legs on either side of his thighs and my skirt spread out over the both of us. I had to admit that I had a wicked appreciation for the full skirts that had come back into fashion as I rubbed teasingly against Emmett and felt him starting to get hard, all hidden under my clothes. “Are the others ready to go?”

“I haven’t seen them.” Emmett looked like Edward was the last thing on his mind as he stroked my cashmere sweater and then slid his hands underneath it. “I like your sweater.”

“You like what’s underneath it,” I murmured.

“That too.” And then he lowered his face to mine and kissed me.

I vaguely heard someone enter the room, and then a noise of disgust which was clearly Edward. Instinctively I threw my hand up and caught the notebook he hurled at our heads.

“If you two have _quite_ finished,” he said irritably. “I mean, don’t let me stop you or anything…we’re only going to be late if we don’t leave now.”

I rolled my eyes and rose from Emmett’s lap, deliberately picturing Emmett and I in a _far_ more compromising position as graphically as I could, until I heard Edward’s low hiss of outrage and knew I’d got to him.

 _I’ve told you to keep out of my head_ , I thought smugly, turning away from him.

Emmett held out his hand for a notebook and grinned amiably at Edward. “Thanks bro,” he said cheerfully, before he vanished through to the kitchen.

“Rosalie, you look _adorable!_ ” Alice, wearing a red flowered blouse and a grey skirt, clapped her hands and beamed at me.

In the mirror above the fireplace I looked at my reflection critically, smoothing the ponytail that Emmett’s hands had mussed up. “Adorable…yes,” I conceded. “But do I look sixteen?”

Alice shrugged. “I don’t even know what sixteen is _meant_ to look like. But you do look beautiful!”

 I grinned at her, and then caught sight of Edward’s reflection in the mirror and laughed threateningly. “You’re supposed to look like you’re fifteen,” I told him, holding my hairbrush in one hand and beginning to stalk him across the living room. “Alice, don’t you think he needs tidier hair?”

Alice giggled. Edward read my mind and went to duck around the sofa but Alice was already there, blocking his path. With a whoop of glee I got him in a headlock and brushed his hair hard, flattening the usually chaotic mop down across his head. When I was done I released him, snorting with laughter at the outraged glare he gave me.

“Very…respectable,” Alice offered. “Now Edward, leave Rosalie’s handiwork alone and show me where the pens are please!”

The blaring sound of the car horn cut into Edward’s reply, and then we heard Emmett, almost as loud, bellowing from the garage. “Geez Edward…get it together! You’re always making me late!”

I giggled at Edward’s exasperated exclamation and flitted out into the garage, calling goodbye to Esme on the way and then sliding into the driver’s seat. Emmett was seated in the passenger seat, twirling a pencil in between his fingers and whistling tunelessly as he waited.

“”Bout time,” he commented, adding as the others came out to the garage after me. “Really Edward, I don’t know…messing about, making us all late….” He snorted. “Nice hairstyle too, you look really hot.”

“He’s supposed to be fifteen,” I protested, easing the car out of the garage and accelerating down the drive. “It makes him look younger.”

“It makes him look like a nerd,” Emmett corrected wickedly. “But hey, at least the outside matches the inside now…” His words cut off and he laughed heartily as Edward punched him hard on the shoulder.

Carlisle parked beside us in the school parking lot. For a moment we stood in the light, drizzling rain, letting the scent of humans drift over us and settle in, adjusting to the increased burn of the thirst when faced with such temptation. Emmett made a face at me and for a moment ducked his nose into my hair and breathed, but his body stayed relaxed and I thought I didn’t have to worry about him for the moment.

Jasper on the other hand stood tense, his face twitching with a slight look of pain as the breeze blew a little stronger and the scent intensified. I couldn’t stop a brief feeling of unease as I looked at him, and I glanced across at Edward who merely shrugged at me. Alice took Jasper’s hand in hers and smiled up at him trustingly.

“Ready?” Carlisle asked, straightening his tie and checking his watch. He half laughed as he took in the sight of us. “Five children…dear me.”

“Yeah, whatever _dad_ ,” Emmett said sarcastically. “Come on, let’s get this over with.” He twirled his pencil with a final flourish and tossed it in to the air before he caught it behind his back.

I could tell Emmett was feeling reckless. He didn’t mind going to school, but he hated first days. He wasn’t as comfortable in the academic area as Edward and I were; and although he wasn’t really a jealous person he had a hard time watching the male reaction to me in a new place, especially if he was pretending to be my brother. It was always easier for him later on, when my reputation as the ice-queen bitch was well established and the boys kept their distance.

  I walked beside Emmett as we crossed the lawn and entered the office. I was aware of the eyes of everyone we passed following us, and I stiffened slightly. Edward and Emmett and I had been so attention-getting when there were only the three of us going to school and college…how would it be now that we were five?

We were guided into the principal’s office immediately, and he shook Carlisle’s hand with an uneasy smile. “Dr Cullen, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Come in, take a seat.”

I took a seat on one side of Carlisle and Alice took the other. Jasper and Edward stood behind us, and Emmett slouched carelessly against the wall, hands in his pockets.

“And these are you children.” Mr Sanders, the principal looked nervously up at the boys and then down at Alice and I. I saw the dull flush of red rise on his neck as he looked at me in a way that was definitely not teacher to student, and I looked away.

“Yes,” Carlisle crossed his legs, looking quite relaxed, as though he had told the story a thousand times. “My adopted children Emmett, Edward and Alice. Rosalie and Jasper are my wife’s niece and nephew, and they’ve come to live with us here to go to school.” He passed across a bundle of papers. “I have their records here.”

“Your children seem very bright, Dr Cullen,” Mr Sanders comments.

“Oh yes,” Carlisle replied airily. “They’ve had some wonderful teachers over the years.”

I raised my eyebrows at him when Mr Sanders wasn’t looking and he winked back. Carlisle had always been our most consistent teacher, no matter where we’d lived or what we’d been studying.

The principal handed each of us a piece of paper with a typed up schedule on it, which I scanned instantly, my heart falling.

“We’ve made up schedules for the children,” Mr Sanders said.

“Well, that should be fine…” Carlisle began, but I sighed deeply and spoke up.

“Excuse me, but you’ve put me in both sewing and cooking.” _And gym,_ I added silently, but I thought trying to get out of three subjects might be pushing it.

Mr Sanders didn’t look very pleased at my critical tone. “All our girls take the domestic arts subjects in ninth and tenth grades,” he told me defensively.

I forced myself not to roll my eyes. “I’d rather not,” I said unequivocally. “I can already sew and I can’t do cooking- I’m on a very specialised diet.” I ignored Emmett’s choked laugh and Edward’s theatrical eye-roll and took Jasper’s schedule, holding it out with mine to the principal. “Look, I can take advanced math and chemistry at those times with Jasper.” I nudged Carlisle with my foot. He was used to letting us manage our own affairs, but I was supposed to be a sixteen year old and he was supposed to be my father. _Little help, please?_

“If that’s not a problem?” he asked Mr Sanders politely.

The principal gave me a stiff smile and made the changes to my schedule with a fountain pen. “If you’re happy for your daughter to take those subjects it can be accommodated. Looking at her transcripts she appears to have the prerequisites.”

“I think it would be best,” Carlisle agreed. “Rosalie’s quite academically inclined and I’m sure she appreciates you making the change for her.” He gave me a pointed look.

I smiled angelically at the principal from under my lowered lashes as I took back my schedule. “Thank you,” I murmured demurely, ignoring the way he once again blushed as he looked at me. Instead I glanced across at Alice, who gave me a tiny smile in return. Yes, I loathed sewing and cooking at school and would have tried to get out of them anyway, but part of my insistence had been motivated by my promise to Alice to keep close to Jasper.

Two students arrived to take us to our first classes, math for Alice and Edward and English for Emmett, Jasper and I. The boy who led the way through the corridor looked like he’d barely gone through puberty- compared to Emmett and Jasper he looked like he should still be in elementary school and seemed terrified by them. He couldn’t even look at me.

“Welcome!” The English teacher, an elderly man, greeted us pleasantly as we knocked and entered the class. “Delightful to have you here. Now young man, perhaps you could tell us your name, and something about yourself? Where you’re from, the last book you read perhaps?”

Jasper looked startled to be addressed immediately, but he straightened up and answered gravely. “I am Jasper Hale. I’m from Texas, and the last book I read was The Plague, by Camus.”

I had seen him pick it up the previous day when it fell from one of Edward’s boxes and put it aside to read, so he must have read it overnight. Considering how Emmett and I had spent the dark hours of night, I thought that Jasper might well prove a formidable rival at school and I eyed him speculatively. I was competitive with anything, but Emmett didn’t care enough about school to make the effort to challenge me. Maybe Jasper would prove to be more fun.

I also realised that we’d failed to consider Jasper’s noticeable southern accent, and considering I was meant to be his twin sister it would be ridiculous for me to be talking with a New York accent. Fortunately mimicry was a vampire gift, and I sounded like quite the southern belle when it was my turn to answer.

“My name is Rosalie Hale. My brother Jasper and I have come to live with our aunt and uncle for school, and the last book I read was The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury.” Actually, the last book I’d read had been an antique medical text from the 1600s that Carlisle had been sent by his vampire friends in Volterra, but I thought that probably wasn’t _quite_ what the teacher was expecting, so I went with the safer option of our last book club book.

Emmett’s eyes were creased in amusement at my newly put on accent, but he shrugged his shoulders at the teacher and said carelessly. “I’m Emmett Cullen. I’ve lived all over…I started reading the Martian Chronicles when Rose was done with it, but I’m not finished yet.”

“Great member of a book club _you_ are,” I muttered, too low for human ears to hear, and Emmett sniffed in mock offence.

The teacher beamed at us. “So we have some more readers among us, excellent! Now gentlemen, Miss Hale, please find a seat and let us get on with the lesson.”

I made my way to the first empty seat I could see and settled gracefully into it, opened my notebook and picked up my pencil, ready to begin my first day of school.


	8. Anyone But You

Emmett sat beside me in our first class, hunched uncomfortably in the small school desk and twirling his pencil absent-mindedly in his fingers. I was relieved to note that he stayed relaxed and seemed unaffected by the heady, enticing scent of all the humans surrounding us. It had been some time since he’d slipped up, but Emmett had always had more trouble with controlling his impulses than I did.

One row ahead and several desks over sat Jasper, his back straight and his shoulders tense. I frowned slightly as a girl brushed past him to go up to the chalkboard and his nostrils flared, instinctively following the scent. I knew he and Alice had been practising living our vegetarian lifestyle for a little while, but school was a whole different story…so many humans in such contained spaces, so much boredom when you might allow your mind to wander. It only took a second for control to fail and instinct and desire to win out over ethics. I wondered uneasily how well Jasper would really manage in the face of this new challenge.

I was separated from the two boys in the next period class, as they went off to gym and I had a library study period, but I knew Jasper would be in the chemistry class after that. I reached the lab before he did and introduced myself to the teacher, mildly amused to realise that I was the only girl in the class. I could see why a few moments later as the teacher interrogated me as to my previous science experience, clearly sceptical as to my ability to keep up with his apparently rigorous curriculum. I felt my irritation rise, but I kept my face smooth and blandly answered his questions. Correctly, which seemed to irritate him, considering the way he eventually snapped at me to go and “sit down where you won’t distract anyone.”

Enraged, I spun around and flipped my ponytail back, not caring in the least if the long tail hit him in the face. _Ugh, so condescending…I’ll show him._ I flounced over the nearest empty lab table and dropped onto the stool, fuming. So far this school wasn’t quite living up to my expectations.

“Would you like to be lab partners?” A husky voice broke into my thoughts and I turned to see a dark haired boy standing beside me awkwardly. As he met my golden, vampire stare he took an unconscious step backwards, at the same time as a wave of red suffused his face.

“No thank you,” I answered politely. “I’m going to work with my brother.” Jasper had just entered the room, and I raised a hand at him in greeting. The other boy melted away as Jasper approached, pulling the stool over to sit beside me and giving me one of his rare smiles.

“He desires you rather badly Rosalie…you wouldn’t rather work with him?”

It took me a second to realise that in his gentle way Jasper was teasing me, and I snorted abruptly. “Oh please…you think Emmett has a thing to worry about from any of _them_?”

Jasper glanced around. “Perhaps not,” he conceded lightly, as he opened his notebook.

I couldn’t help but notice the tension in his shoulders and jaw, and the darker light in his eyes. “Are you managing okay?” I asked bluntly.

The look he gave me lasted only an instant, but I saw it and recognised it, because it was a look I had seen too often in my own face. It was pride. A fierce determination to never give in. _He is struggling, and he doesn’t want me to see it because he fears being seen as weak._ _But if we pretend that it’s not hard, if we ignore the struggle, we risk so much…_

“I know how difficult it is,” I went on quietly. “You haven’t done this before…it would have been different when it was just you and Alice.”

“Yes, it was different then,” Jasper allowed. He began taking notes in an old fashioned, meticulous script, and I thought that was all he would say. I bent my head over my own notes but a moment later Jasper, still not looking at me, spoke again with a voice so quiet that no one else could hear. “This is very important to her. This…family. She talked of you all to me the day we met, and has been waiting to come and find you ever since. I will do anything it takes to make this work for her.”

Looking at his taut face and fierce eyes I had no doubt that Jasper meant what he said. For Alice, he would do anything, no matter how impossible it might seem. And watching the predatory twitch of his muscles as one of the humans brushed past a little too close, I couldn’t help but wonder if his determination would be enough.

I walked to the cafeteria with him for our lunch period. I was aware of how much attention the pair of us drew as I stepped confidently down the hall with Jasper a pace behind, both of us so tall and fair and preternaturally perfect. My vanity was gratified by the number of eyes that followed me, but Jasper’s face betrayed no hint of emotion.

In the cafeteria I subtly guided Jasper over to the lunch line. “Everyone eats lunch here,” I said in response to his quizzical look. “We wouldn’t want to stand out as different now, would we?”

With a face of mild distaste Jasper took a tray and the two of us found an empty table to sit at. Edward arrived next, and then Emmett, who sank into the seat beside me with a tiny sigh.

“Okay?” I asked him, the single word encompassing everything I wanted to ask him. For a moment I was worried…had we focused so much on Jasper’s evident struggle that we had overlooked Emmett’s own difficulties? I reached over and took his hand, lacing my fingers through his.

“It’s okay baby,” he said softly, tipping my face towards his. His lips brushed across mine, light as feather, as his golden eyes stared into mine.

For a moment I forgot about the loud chatter and sounds of eating that surrounded us, my world shrank down to Emmett and I and the spark of love and desire and need that flared between us. _Love you, want you, need you, my beloved._  I touched his lower lip with the very tip of my tongue and heard him growl, and goodness knows what Edward would have said to us then if we hadn’t been interrupted by Alice, who came skipping up to the table and triumphantly presented us with a cardboard box containing a somewhat blackened and lopsided pie.

“Look!” she exclaimed gleefully. “It’s only my first day of school and I already learned something! Now I can bake a pie!”

“Because that’s a useful skill in our way of life,” I muttered. I peered at her pie- was that supposed to be apples or cherries?

Jasper’s manners were impeccable. He had risen to his feet as Alice approached, and then he pulled out a chair for her and smiled gently. “I’m glad you had a good morning.”

Edward looked at the pie, his face expressionless. “Very…nice,” he said, with effort not to betray his amusement.

Emmett, not one to be too concerned with other people’s feelings, only laughed. “My mama baked pies Alice, and they’re not supposed to look like that,” he told her amiably. “Black is _not_ the right colour for pasty.”

Alice’s face fell. “Oh,” she said, looking sadly at her pie. “I’ve never cooked anything before.” She took Jasper’s hand and sighed. “I’ve never even _eaten_ anything before, so I thought I did quite well, all things considered.”

Emmett wasn’t used to anyone taking his remarks very seriously. He was used to Edward and I, who gave back as good as we got when he teased and taunted, and Alice’s hurt feelings clearly both surprised and distressed him. “Well, it’s not so bad for a first attempt,” he said consolingly. “And it’s not like you’re going to eat it or anything.”

Alice grinned back at him, clearly forgiving him, and then she and Jasper began murmuring between them. I looked across the table at Edward, who was methodically cutting his meal into tiny pieces and pushing it around his plate. His eyes were focussed on his food but I could tell by the slightly glazed expression that he was listening to the thoughts of the people around us.

“Anything interesting?” I asked him lightly.

Edward shrugged. “The usual. Wondering why we’re all so unfriendly. People hoping Emmett is going to join the football team. Boys thinking you’re beautiful.” He grinned at me wryly, as I tried and failed to hide my smirk.

Emmett shot him a dirty look. “Thanks for that, bro. I really want to know that they’re all eyeing off my girl.” He scowled across the room and stabbed his fork resentfully into his lunch.

“Rosalie asked,” Edward said with a sigh.

“Oh Rosalie,” Alice leaned across the table to me. “I’ve just seen…Esme is going to pick us up after school to go shopping! Won’t that be fun?”

The casual and assured way she told me what she’d ‘seen’ made her visions seem so ordinary. The idea of it though, that Alice could pick over my future actions and reactions like that, made me feel so edgy that it was a very half-hearted smile I gave her in return.

Alice’s visions were accurate though, and when I headed out to the parking lot after the final bell with Jasper and Emmett in tow we found Esme already waiting for us.

“Shopping time!” she announced gaily. “Alice and Rosalie? I’m guessing you boys would prefer to go home?”

“I thought we boys might go hunting,” Edward said casually. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m thirsty. Jasper, what do you think? Will you come with Emmett and I and we can show you some of the good places?”

I glanced sharply at Edward. His eyes were like pale butterscotch, and I knew he wasn’t thirsty at all. But Jasper, standing beside Edward with his head up and his arms folded, radiated strain and tension and I realised what Edward was doing. Hunting would be a very good idea.

“Sounds good to me!” Emmett said enthusiastically. I knew he wasn’t particularly thirsty either, but he was always keen to hunt. “We’ll show you the likely places for good stuff Jas. Then when you take the pipsqueak out later you’ll have it all over her.” He grinned teasingly at Alice.

“She might not be such a sneaky prey stealer as Rosalie is,” Edward taunted, skipping lightly out of the way as I swung a fist at him.

“Children!” Esme reprimanded. “Really, if you’re going to behave like infants I’ll have to treat you like that! Rosalie, hands to yourself please. Edward, leave your sister alone!” She frowned at us threateningly, but her eyes were glimmering with amusement at the same time. She always found it funny when she acted the mother role in public. “Hunting is a good idea for you boys anyway. Emmett, you drive home please; remember you’re only fifteen now Edward and don’t have your license. Rosalie and Alice, I’ll take you downtown in the Cadillac- hop in.”

I was determined to make an effort with Alice, and shopping was a fun way to do it. She shopped like a whirlwind, trying on everything that caught her eye, consulting Esme and I about all her choices. She was not a selfish shopper either, she frequently became side-tracked by things she found and insisted that either Esme or I _must_ try on, reacting with great joy when we went along with her styling suggestions. All three of us were laden down with bags when we returned to the house in the early evening.

Emmett was in our room when I carried my packages inside. He was reading in the armchair, sitting sideways with his legs hooked over the arm, but he straightened up and smiled when he saw me.

“Successful trip, I see,” he commented as I dropped the packages on the bed. “You want to show me what you bought?”

“Maybe later. How was the hunting?”

Emmett put the book face down on the floor, open to keep his place, and stretched lazily. “Not bad. Jasper’s a lethal hunter.”

“Mmhmm.” I eyed him speculatively, not sure what the little note of edginess in his voice had been about. “Do you not like him? Did something happen?”

“No, he’s fine.” Emmett shifted restlessly. “He’s quiet, but I think he’s going to be good to have around.”

“But…?” I prompted him, and he laughed at me sheepishly.

“Is it that obvious? Damn, I feel so stupid…it’s really nothing, I know that…” Emmett ran his hand through his hair and made a face at me, and I laughed gently and jumped on to his lap.

“I know you! Something is bothering you about him…spill it.” I pressed my cheek against his, feeling his arms go around me automatically.

“It’s YOU!” Emmett muttered, burying his face in my neck. “The way you look with him…you’re both so freaking tall and blonde and perfect, you look like some kind of fucking Viking warrior royalty…and you were with him all the time today and he’s so goddamned smart like you…and I _know_ he’s with Alice and you’re with me, but…”

 _He’s jealous._ I pressed my face against his head and hid my smile in his hair. I didn’t want Emmett to feel bad, but this kind of possessive jealousy was an emotion I knew well. “You don’t need to worry.”

“I know that really,” Emmett looked at me, his face screwed up in embarrassment. “I know I’m being a bonehead…but damn it angel girl, I don’t know how anyone doesn’t just look at you and fall on their knees and worship you. And I’ve never had to kind of think about it much, because you don’t like Edward, and it’s all different with Carlisle and I mean, humans- as if, so…fuck it, I’m being an idiot.”

“You are,” I said tenderly. “But you’re _my_ idiot and I love you.” I lowered my face to his, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Now you know how I felt when we all went to Denali and I had to watch Kate and Tanya and Irina all look at you with lust in their eyes.”

Emmett chuckled. “You know I don’t see anyone but you.”

“And neither do I.” I kissed my way down his neck, sucking on the tender place just above his collar bone, both hearing and feeling the low, rumbling growl in his chest as I unbuttoned his shirt and kissed my way lower. I slid off his lap and knelt between his legs, my hands on his buttons as I brushed my lips across the trail of hair that thickened underneath his belly button, leading downward.

“Rosa girl,” Emmett said hoarsely, cupping my face in his hand.

“I want to,” I said, my voice low. “I want you…there will never be anyone else for me but you. Always, Emmett. Only you.” And I took him in to me and watched him fall apart with the pleasure of what I could do to him… _always, Emmett, it will always be you._


	9. Friendships and Robots

“Checkers?” I suggested to Emmett. It was either that or do my homework, and I wasn’t in the mood for chemistry right then.

“Sure,” Emmett threw himself down into the chair. “And when I win you can clean my boots for me. They got all muddy when I was hunting.”

I snorted. “Oh sure…because I’m going to lose?”

Emmett grinned at me wickedly. “Scared to bet?” he taunted. “You can’t match my superior skills?”

“Oh, you wish!” I scoffed. “Fine then- loser cleans all the shoes. Winner…” I narrowed my eyes at him and smiled archly. “I’ll tell you later what you can do for me when I win.”

Emmett laughed comfortably and set up the board. He took the first move, but it didn’t help him, and after an embarrassingly short (to Emmett!) time I had soundly defeated him.

“Aah,” I sighed, stretched as I leaned back in my chair. “What a nice evening to watch someone else clean all the shoes…”

Emmett snarled at me and then gave me one of his pleading, puppy dog looks. “Rosaliiiiieeeee,” he began.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so! When have you ever let me off a bet?” I grinned at him wickedly.

Scowling mutinously, Emmett fetched the shoe brush and polish from the laundry and then came back in, kicking at one of his own abandoned muddy boots so that it shot across the room, nearly breaking through the wall as it hit. At that moment Alice and Jasper came into the room, both of them looking more cheerful and relaxed than I’d previously seen them.

_Oh, I know THAT look…I don’t think Emmett and I are the only ones who missed each other today, with school and shopping, and were happy to be alone together again…_

“Stop sulking!” I said to Emmett with a smirk. “You made the bet and you lost, so get to work boot boy.”

 “I’ll give you the damn boot,” Emmett muttered. He glared at Alice as she giggled at him. “Don’t get any ideas, pipsqueak.”

“Alice would know who was going to win from the start,” Edward said, looking up from his study with an amused smile. “You might need to curb your compulsive gambling with Alice around, Emmett, or you might find yourself doing a lot more than polishing up the shoes.”

I swept the checkers back into the box and scowled. “What a bore,” I muttered. “It’s already hard enough to find something to play where Edward can’t just outright cheat, and now you can just predict the outcome right from the start.” My competitive nature chafed under this unfairness that translated into a double handicap for me. I hated losing.

“Oh well,” Esme said consolingly. “I suppose us mere mortals…well, mere immortals…will just have to play with each other so we follow the rules. Scrabble, Rosalie?” She took the box off the shelf with a hopeful smile, and I nodded as I shoved the checkers back into the stack of game boxes.

Emmett began humming as he polished the shoes. He didn’t like losing either, but unlike me he wasn’t really one to sulk. Esme and I sat across from each other at the small game table and she passed across my tiles.

“Multi language or English only?” Esme asked.

“English,” I said. Esme and I had English, German and French as common languages and we often played in different languages in Scrabble just for something different. Edward had done a rough calculation of the frequency of letter usage in Latin and we had a separate set of tiles that he, Carlisle and I used to play in Latin sometimes too.

“Are you feeling more comfortable, Rosalie?” Esme asked quietly, as she placed her first word and waited.

“In what way?” I laid down my word and picked up more tiles.

Esme looked at the game board rather than me. “With Alice and Jasper here,” she said. “I know you were a little uncertain at first, but you’ve spent time with Jasper at school and out shopping with Alice. I wondered if that had set your mind a little more at ease.” She made a word and took more tiles.

I combed my fingers through my hair and thought for a moment. “I think so,” I said slowly. I looked over at the big table, where Carlisle was writing in his journal and Edward was flipping through some new textbooks. Alice and Jasper sat across from them, Jasper’s hand resting lovingly on her back, and Alice’s face bright and animated as she talked. “I think…maybe it’s going to work out.”

“I learned to bake pies,” Alice said, in response to Carlisle’s questions about school. “Emmett said it wasn’t very good, but…”

“I said it wasn’t like my mama’s pies,” Emmett said. He grinned at Alice teasingly. “And you have to admit it was pretty shit…it’s not like I just went and insulted your pie for the hell of it.”

Carlisle chuckled. “Well, I’m sure baking is a useful skill.”

I looked at Esme and raised my eyes. “I don’t know about that- I can’t say that I’ve even touched an oven in seventeen years,” I murmured, making a word.

“What about you Jasper? How was your day?” Carlisle asked.

Jasper’s face did not reveal much of his inner feelings as he considered Carlisle’s question. “Fine,” he said at last. “Difficult. Interesting though it’s a rather different world to the one I last went to school in. I’m grateful Emmett and Rosalie were there with me.”

“Don’t mention it.” Emmett, finished with the shoes, stood up and stretched. He grinned at Jasper. “Kind of nice to have some company- just let me copy your homework and we’ll be cool.”

Esme met my eyes and we both laughed quietly. Emmett and his homework! Winking at me he dropped a light kiss on the top of my head as he went over to the table and sat beside Alice, slapping one of his notebooks down on the table in front of him. Esme smiled over at them all fondly, and then looked back at me.

“I think you are right Rosalie…I really do think it will work out.”

~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~

School was much the same the following days. To my surprise, I found that despite my misgivings it was already beginning to feel natural having Jasper play the role of my brother. He was a steadier presence than Emmett and, unlike Edward, he was never sarcastic or irritable with me. In return he saw much more of my good side and the two of us began, slowly and cautiously, to build something that approached a genuine friendship.

So when he knocked on my bedroom door one afternoon, I actually invited him in. I had been working on my chemistry homework and was pleased with the distraction Jasper offered as he stood in the doorway, holding a large cardboard box.

“Alice told me to bring this down to you. It was just delivered by courier- she seemed to think I should see what was in it.”

I jumped up and took the box. Recognising the company name, I quickly threw a blanket down on the floor and then knelt to open it. “Thank you. I don’t know why she thought you should see it though…no one else is really interested.”

“What is it?” Jasper came and looked down at the pieces I was carefully removing from the packaging and laying out in rows.

“It’s _going_ to be a robot,” I answered, slightly defensively. Whilst everyone in the family was always on the lookout for new hobbies, my interest in robotics had come slightly out of left field and had been a cause for some amusement.

Jasper didn’t laugh though. Instead his eyes lit up with interest, and he crouched down beside me to look more intently at the components as I arranged them. “Have you done something like this before?”

“Nothing this complex.” I hesitated for a moment. Since the first model aeroplane kit Carlisle had given me when I was still a newborn vampire I had always loved building things. I loved the neatness of it, the orderliness, the absolute control I had over the construction and results. Did I really want to share that?

“Are you interested in this kind of technology?”

“Yes. I’ve done a lot of reading since I’ve been with Alice,” Jasper told me. “We didn’t really have the means for practical experiments, but I read many books and magazines about robotics and electronics. I’ll be fascinated to see what you do with this, Rosalie.”

“You could help, if you wanted to,” I said diffidently. I reached across to the bookshelf and pulled down a notebook that bulged with articles from newspapers and magazine and journals that I had pasted into it, as well as pages of my own notes and designs. “This is my logbook, if you’re interested. It shows what I’ve done before, and it’s got my plans and ideas for what I want to do now in it. I’ve just been waiting for these things to be delivered so I can start.”

Jasper took the notebook with alacrity, reading rapidly through my notes and plans as I finished unpacking everything I had ordered, checking them off against my mental list of parts I needed. “This looks impressive,” he murmured. “I can see where you’ve modified existing models…it’s very innovative, especially this section…”

I felt a warm glow of pride. No one else understood enough to realise that the things I had been working on were really at the cutting edge of technology. Because of the need for our family to maintain our privacy I was unable to fully take part in the community of scientists who were developing the new technologies and exploring their uses which could be frustrating and lonely. But here was Jasper, reading my notebook and making quick, meticulous notes of his own on a spare sheet of paper. Soon he and I were immersed in discussion of the plans and making rapid sketches of potential alterations as we began to put things together, and I realised how very much I was enjoying myself.

“This is what Alice must have seen,” Jasper said with an amused smile, searching through the components. “She always told me you’d be my friend…even when it seemed very unlikely! Thank you for letting me join in Rosalie, this is fun.”

I laughed, a little guiltily. I couldn’t deny that I hadn’t been especially welcoming. “I’m glad you came in, it’s nice to talk about it with someone who knows what they’re doing!”

Looking at Jasper and I sitting around a blanket on the floor spread with parts of something to be constructed reminded me, suddenly and vividly, of the first lengthy conversation I had had with newborn Emmett. I had been building a model plane, and he had come into my room and for the first time I had really let my defences down and talked to him. Maybe I could only build friendships when I was also building something tangible.

“You’re thinking about Emmett,” Jasper said.

I looked up at him sharply. I hated Edward reading things out of my head…surely Jasper wasn’t doing it too! But the look in his eyes was gentle as he smiled at me and spoke again.

“I’m not doing what Edward does! But I was right, wasn’t I? I can always tell now. The emotions you feel, Rosalie…every person is different, and with familiarity I can come to recognise individuals easily, but your emotions have always been so clear. Right from the first day I came here I felt I knew you, just from feeling your emotional responses. You’re intense Rosalie, and I don’t mean that as anything other than a compliment. It’s not always easy for me to be around you…” He laughed a little apologetically. “Sometimes that intensity can be almost painful…”

I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or offended, but suddenly Jasper smiled and the happiness in it illuminated his face and made me believe that he was genuine in his admiration. I also had to concede that his assessment of me was not unfair- I _was_ an emotionally intense person.

But rather than avoiding me, Jasper had seemed quite happy to be in my presence. I was uncomfortably aware that he had physically flinched away from me when I had been in a rage but, unlike Edward who had judged me for my tantrums even when I was brand new to this life and never forgiven me for it, Jasper had seemed to accept me for the way I was.

“People’s emotions are sometimes uncomfortable for you,” I said slowly, looking at my hands rather than at him. “Mine are…” I don’t finish.

Jasper smiled gently. “You can be all sharp corners and prickles sometimes Rosalie, but there is the other side of you. You don’t share it with people in words, but I feel it. The way you love Emmett- that is beautiful. Even when you only think of him in passing, I feel the shift in your emotions and it’s joyful. Emmett too, the way he feels about you, and the way Carlisle and Esme are as well. The atmosphere in this house is extraordinary for me. We came here for Alice, I’ll admit that, but I’ve found something I didn’t even know could exist. It’s been a revelation, and I’m finding it...well, it’s rather wonderful, and I want to thank you for allowing Alice and I to share in it. It means more than you know.”


	10. What We Are

“I want the buck.”

Crouched beside me, Emmett’s face was intent as he scanned the herd of deer grazing in the forest. They moved through the trees in a haphazard group, unaware that we were watching them with venom flowing.

“Don’t you steal him from me,” Emmett muttered threateningly. His eyes, dark with thirst and the proximity of a meal met mine, and I could see him fighting to hold back his grin. “I know your tricks, pretty girl…today he’s mine.”

I licked my lip and raised my eyebrows. “We’ll see.”

From some distance away we heard a whistle that sounded like a birdcall, and Emmett and I looked at each other and grinned in anticipation. Jasper and Alice were circling around and they were warning us to be prepared for them to make their move. I half rose, poised to run, and felt rather than saw Emmett shift his weight beside me, ready to join me in attack.

We didn’t need to hunt cooperatively. It was just something Emmett and Jasper had come to enjoy doing together, and that Alice and Edward and I went along with- mostly because it was amusing to watch Jasper and Emmett take it all so seriously. It was fun though, and as I heard Jasper’s unmistakeable Rebel yell echoing through the forest and Emmett’s answering Scotch battle cry and the two of us plunged out through the brush and into the herd of animals I thought there were worse ways to spend a morning.

I fed quickly. It was slightly easier to do in front of people now that Emmett and Jasper had made it in to a game, but I had never quite got past my deep sense of revulsion over the monster I had become and I didn’t like to linger over my meals in company.

I moved across to a fallen tree, an ancient thing that had fallen in the last storm leaving a deep, wide hollow in the earth where its roots pulled free. Jasper was crouched in the bottom of the hollow, draining a deer with fierce concentration while one dead one already lay behind him, and a moment later Alice appeared, dragging her own kill through the trees.

“Where’s Emmett?” she asked.

I lifted the tree trunk and tossed the body of the deer in underneath, holding it up for Alice to kick hers in after it. “The show-off wanted the buck,” I told her. “He thinks they taste better.”

“They do!” Emmett’s indignant voice rang out and he appeared above me, balancing on the fallen trunk with the limp body of the buck dangling by its antlers from one hand. His shirt was jammed in the pocket of his trousers and his bare chest shone faintly in the sunlight filtering in through the leaves. He slung the deer in under the tree and then somersaulted like an acrobat off the tree trunk, landing silently beside me. He grinned at me and wrapped an arm around me, nuzzling into my neck. “And who are you calling a show-off?”

“Gee, I wonder?” I muttered sarcastically, but the look in his eyes and the heat and smell and energy of him drew me in and I couldn’t help kissing him. He tasted of fresh blood, and for a moment I wished we hadn’t come out with Alice and Jasper.

There was a loud, deliberate cough from beside me and I pulled away from Emmett somewhat reluctantly. Jasper gave me an apologetic smile as he threw his deer in beside the others. Smiling back ruefully I pulled the fallen tree back into place and kicked at some of the leaf litter that we had disturbed.

“You’re not planning on wearing that to school, are you?” Alice sounded appalled.

I looked over at Emmett, who had pulled his shirt from his pocked and was pulling it over his head. “What? It’s clean…that’s why I took it off, so it wouldn’t get blood on it.”

“It’s so crumpled though! It looks like you’ve slept in it!” Alice shook her head in distress.

“I don’t sleep at all,” Emmett snorted. “Let alone wear shirts while I do it.”

“Oh, you just have no idea!” Alice said in despair. “The way you are about your clothes Emmett!”

“It’s a losing battle,” I told Alice firmly. “Trust me, getting him to remember to take off the blood stained shirts was difficult enough. The fact that he actually took it off to keep it clean is a step forward.” I tugged at his shirt, straightening it, and stretched up to brush free the twigs and leaves that had snagged in his hair. Emmett watched me intently, a small half-smile on his face, and I couldn’t resist slowly and deliberately licking the smear of blood on his cheek. He growled, but before he could turn his head so that his lips would meet mine Alice had seized his hand and yanked, hard.

“No! We have to go to school!” she said bossily.

I rolled my eyes, but conceded she was right and reluctantly turned away from Emmett to follow Alice back to the house. Emmett groaned and grumbled behind me, but I heard his quick footsteps and a moment later his hand took mine as we ran back to the house.

Edward had the car out on the driveway, ready to go. He scowled at me and reluctantly climbed into the backseat so I could take the driver’s spot. He hated pretending to be younger and not having a license, and I could never resist taunting him as I smugly took on the role of family driver.  

Emmett sat beside me in the front, scribbling in his notebook as he finished off some homework. “Jas, can you do that math for me?” he asked pleadingly. “I’ve got this damn French to do for first period and I’ve never learned it before…fuck you for telling me languages were a good idea Edward!”

I couldn’t help laughing. Emmett’s interest in school varied, but foreign languages had never been something he’d considered. I’d asked him to take French during this enrolment with the vague idea of travelling to Europe with him in the future. Because of his perfect vampire memory and mimicry ability it wasn’t going to be difficult for him to learn it and he’d agreed, but clearly he wasn’t enthusiastic.

“It’s good to challenge yourself,” Edward said, and I rolled my eyes at how pompous he sounded. “Rosalie learned French and German when we were in Europe and she’s picked up Latin and begun on Sanskrit since then, and it’s about time you made the effort to catch up.”

I smirked at Emmett, who snorted in disgust at the both of us, muttering rebelliously “What, so I can talk shit in twelve different languages like you do?”

Alice giggled at him, and Emmett whipped his head around, glaring at her in the backseat. “Look pipsqueak, don’t you start!”

Jasper reached over and took Emmett’s notebook, effortlessly imitating his dark scrawl as he finished his math homework before I pulled into the school parking lot.

“Thanks,” Emmett said cheerfully, piling his books haphazardly on his lap. He grinned mischievously as Alice, who was still laughing at him, and affectionately rumpled her hair. “Your turn will come, my apprentice! Wait til they get on at you to learn something because it’s ‘useful’ instead of fun!”

Alice laughed. “I seem to have that covered with my cooking class! It’s so much fun, I really do adore it, but I’m driving the teacher to distraction. She actually said to me last time that it was as if I’d never even set foot in a kitchen before…little does she know how right she is!” For a moment she stopped and her eyes went glassy- a sign I know recognised meant she was seeing a vision of the future. “Oh,” she said in disappointment a moment later. “I can’t go today- there’s going to be an accident with a knife.” She looked over at us seriously. “You had all better stay away from the kitchen this afternoon too. It’s going to be messy enough that they’ll take her to the hospital to get stitched up.”

Jasper grimaced. “I really don’t know how Carlisle does it.”

I didn’t know how he did it either. Twice I had resisted the lure of spilled human blood but it had been under extreme emotional duress- once with Royce King when my hatred and revulsion had overridden my bloodlust; and once with human Emmett, when something I only later recognised as love had proven a stronger force. I had always been in awe of Carlisle’s ability to deal with human blood unperturbed.

“Years of practice,” Edward said lightly. “I will say Alice, that it’s very handy having you knowing when school classes will involve blood- imagine if that kind of thing came as a surprise.” He smiled at her approvingly, and the five of us began walking up the path towards the building.

I could feel the eyes of the other students following us. Envy, trepidation, curiosity…the human emotions were obvious even to me. Conscious of their scrutiny I lifted my head arrogantly as I walked.

“They don’t like us,” Alice said softly. I was surprised by the note of wistful longing in her voice. Alice always seemed so happy, so joyfully content in herself and her life…did she, like me, long for things that could never be?

“Who cares?” Emmett said carelessly.

I squeezed his hand. Emmett truly didn’t care, had never cared about the human world being barred to him. Emmett’s confidence in who he was, and his acceptance and contentment with his place in both the shadow world we lived in and the human world we masqueraded in ran bone deep. He had me, he had the rest of the family…that was all he needed. 

“They sense that we’re different,” Edward said to Alice in a low voice. “It’s instinct Alice, that’s all…you’re a predator and part of them recognises that and their survival instincts guide them to stay away. You can’t take it personally.”

“I just wanted…” Alice’s voice drifted off, and for a minute I looked into her eyes, briefly shadowed with unhappiness.

“It’s your first school,” I said quietly. “But you’ll learn after a while that we’re not like them and we’ll never be part of the human world, not really. It’s not safe when the control might snap at any moment. Even if there wasn’t that danger, the truth is that they’re going to go through school and go on in to the world and grow and change and live and die…and we won’t. This is what we are, and this is what we’ll always be.”

A little surprised I had said so much I turned away from her, feeling the soothing touch of Emmett’s hand surreptitiously stroking my back. _Frozen in time, forever unchanging…will I ever get used to that?_

Alice and I had gym first period so, waving goodbye to the boys, we trudged towards the gymnasium. Well, I trudged…I hated gym. Alice skipped, since it appeared even gym couldn’t dampen her innate perkiness.

In the locker room I removed my dress and slipped into the one piece uniform gymsuit. Looking at the hideous costume in the mirror I couldn’t stop myself from making a face and giving a bad tempered snort. It was so ugly…for a moment I thought longingly of going to school in the 1930’s when such an outfit would never have been allowed. “I don’t know what I hate more,” I muttered to Alice. “Gym, or the stupid outfits that go along with it.”

Alice giggled as she did up her belt. “YOU look good in everything.”

With a sigh I began winding my ponytail around itself, and then secured it in to bun. “Gym then. I usually try and get out of it when we enrol in school, but I thought I’d already pushed them far enough by refusing to do cooking and sewing, so I got stuck with it this time. It’s an excruciating experience- holding back all the time and not winning. God, I hate to lose, even something as meaningless as a school softball game!” I swung an imaginary bat, remembering the last time Edward and Emmett and I had got outside to play. “We need to play at home- do you play baseball?”

“We used to play sometimes, in the carnival,” Alice told me a reflective smile. “Just scratch games, with whoever felt like it.”

I had a hard time imagining Alice’s gypsy carnival life, although she spoke of it freely and fondly. In truth I found Alice’s whole vampire history rather fascinating, and very different to mine. I had been turned by Carlisle and woken in a family who took care of me, offering me a lifestyle of comfort and ease and wealth that more than matched that of my human life. Alice remembered nothing of her human life and change, and had woken alone. She had travelled as a lone vampire for twenty eight years, and not until she met Jasper was she able to relax and let down her guard and be open about who she really was.

A group of girls came into the locker room, their laughter and chattering fading away as they saw Rosalie and I. Tossing my head haughtily I said, “Come on Alice,” and strode out into the gym, taking a seat on the bleachers at the far end.

Trotting to keep up with me, Alice dropped into the seat beside me, asking wonderingly, “You really don’t care about not being friends with them? You don’t ever wish it was different?”

_Don’t I ever wish it was different? Oh Alice…I don’t think anyone wishes it was different more than I do._

I rested my chin in my hands and stared ahead of me. I didn’t always share easily but this odd, fey girl had wormed her way into my heart and sitting beside her then I suddenly felt very close to her. “There are things that can’t be changed, Alice,” I said bleakly. “The human reaction to us is one of them. I’ve been this thing…what I am, for seventeen years now, and wishing doesn’t get me anywhere. I have Emmett, and Esme and Carlisle and even Edward, and that has to be enough.”

Alice’s eyes are brimming with sympathy and something that approaches love. “You have me and Jasper now too,” she said, and it was as much an offer as a statement of her feelings.

 _My sister. My brother._ I nodded slowly. “Yes. I have you and Jasper now, too.”

Alice’s thin little arm came around my waist and she leaned against my arm and gave me a light hug. For a moment I tensed at the unfamiliarity of being embraced by someone not Emmett, but then I felt myself slowly relax. It was Alice, and it was okay. _It’s going to happen. I can do this…sisters and friends. I WANT to do this._


	11. The Monsters

“Rosalie, what’s Edward doing?”

Sitting beside Emmett in our shared history class, I looked up sharply from my book. Sure enough Edward was beckoning to me through the window, his face tense.

“Something’s happened,” I muttered. Ignoring the disapproving frown from the teacher I snapped my book shut and began gathering my things so that when the bell rang I was already half way out the door, Emmett on my heels.

“What is it?” I demanded as I reached Edward.

He turned and began striding towards the gym. “Trouble,” he said shortly, “Jasper has…had an accident. Alice had a vision while we were in biology and pretended to faint so we could get out of class…he’s down behind the gym with the body.” And then none of us said a word as Emmett and I matched his rapid pace.

Edward took a faint path that skirted the gym and came out through some bushes behind it into a tiny cleared space. Jasper and Alice were there, arms wrapped around each other, and beside them on the hard packed dirt was a drained human body. The scent of a feeding hung heavy on the air.

I recognised the body as that of a boy in my math class. Billy, or Bobby, something like that…I wrenched my mind away. I couldn’t think of him as a human, as an individual person with feelings and a family, not now. Not with what I was going to go have to do with him.

Jasper’s face was like stone as he looked at me, his eyes streaked with crimson.

“No one saw you come down here?” I asked quietly.  

“No, I had a library period,” he answered.

“Okay…and now you have gym with Emmett, right?”

Jasper and Emmett nodded. I thought fast, and then looked at Edward and said, “They should go.”

“No!” Jasper and Emmett both made noises of dissent, but I shook my head.

“You have to. We can’t do anything that might draw attention to us. Five of us skipping out on last period is too obvious.”

Edward nodded in agreement. “Yes, that might work,” he said thoughtfully, and then looked at Alice and Jasper. “We have to get rid of the body. We can’t make this one look like an accident, he can’t be found with bite marks here at school and we can’t disguise them but Rosalie thinks she can take him down and hide him in the lake.”

Alice’s eyes went wide with horror, and I gritted my teeth. _Don’t you dare judge me for being a monster because of what I’ll do here! Maybe I AM one, but if I can pull this off it will save Jasper’s ass…and isn’t that you what you want?_

“I’ll take Alice with me,” I said flatly. “If you go to the office Edward, and tell them that you got me to take her home after she fainted, that covers an absence for the two of us this afternoon. The three of you boys need to stay at school. I’m sorry, but as I said, all of us disappearing will be too obvious.” I looked at Alice challengingly. “If you can help me with this, Alice?”

_This is the reality of this life too, Alice…when there are mistakes we have to hide them. We can’t risk discovery or even suspicion._

Alice squared her shoulders and looked at me defiantly. “I can do whatever you can,” she declared, and I couldn’t stop my slight smile.

“You think this will work?” I asked the boys. “Edward?”

Jasper’s face was taut with strain and he shook his head at me. “I really think…”

“Shut up,” Emmett said to him, surprisingly gently. “We’ve done this before- no one can stage a death scene or hide the evidence like my angel girl can. Just let her get on with it.” He looked at me, with eyes full of love and concern. Yes, I was good at hiding the evidence, good at covering up and lying about the deaths that lay at our feet, but only Emmett truly knew what it cost me. “Love you, baby,” he murmured.

“Emmett’s right,” Edward said steadily to Jasper. “Rosalie is good at this, and I think what she’s planning will work.”

Jasper’s lips tightened, but he said nothing. Alice, her eyes shadowed with anxiety, touched him with gentle hands, kissing him softly. “Go on,” she said to him gently. “Go with Emmett to gym, and then come home. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Emmett reached across to Jasper and rumpled his hair, messing it up so that half of it fell across his eyes. “Just don’t look at anybody,” he advised, trying to sound light. “Come on buddy, let’s get this over with.”

The three boys disappeared around the corner, and I let my eyes drift down towards the body. “We need to get that in to the car I suppose,” I said in a low voice. “Can you get it over to the back fence?” I noticed the way Alice winced when I referred to the body as ‘it’, but we had no time for squeamishness.

I left Alice with the body while I fetched the car and drove it slowly down the road running along the back of the school, pulling over only when I was sure there was no one there to see. Alice had the body by the fence and once I stopped she laid him gently in the trunk before she scrambled into the front seat beside me.

It was a cool, grey day and there were few other cars as I left school and then town, taking the road that led to our house. I didn’t stop, but instead accelerated fast past our turn off and headed towards the lake.

“Have you done this before?” Alice was folding the pleats in her skirt in agitation, although her face looked serene. I could tell she was trying to look calm and in control.

“Getting rid of bodies? Not in the lake, but yes.” I hesitated. “Emmett…he had trouble with temptation at the start. There have been several times when restraint was too difficult. As I always said to him, it’s inevitable really. We fight our own nature every single day, and sometimes we’re going to lose. Sometimes we can make it look like an accident, particularly when it’s somewhere Carlisle is established as a doctor and can rule on cause of death. We’re too new here for that though, so it’s just a matter of hiding the evidence and avoiding suspicion.”

Unbidden, the memories of other bodies and death scenes came to mind. Emmett, his eyes crimson and his body hot and humming with life as the human blood coursed through him…I wrenched my mind back to the task at hand.

Alice’s eyes went glassy as she sought out her visions. “It will work…” she murmured, in a curiously flat voice. “We’ll take him down to the lake and out to the centre in a rowboat. They’ll find the body and think he skipped school to go fishing. They’ll rule drowning…by the time the body floats any evidence of what Jasper did will be gone.” She opened her eyes and blinked, and then turned and smiled at me with relief.

“You’re sure?” I asked. “I didn’t know what you could see of the future.” Being able to see whether my hastily thought out plan would have a successful outcome was the first time I had ever really thought about the possible benefits of Alice’s gift. Maybe it wasn’t always going to be just cheating at games and telling me what I was going to do before I could really make up my mind to do it!

“I can’t explain what I do and don’t see,” Alice said, a little wearily. “Mostly I see the results of decisions…but not always.”

I pulled the car off onto a narrow, overgrown track and drove slowly down towards the lake. I swore softly as we jolted through potholes and I heard the scratch of sticks and branches on the roof, but I pushed forward until we were close to the water and then parked, concealing the car as best I could in the thick scrub. “We need to be careful that no one sees us,” I said to Alice.

“No one will.” Her visions had given her confidence, and she smiled at me determinedly. “They’ll be fishing over on the other side of the cove. If we take that boat, it will all work out as I said.”

Without waiting for my help, Alice took the body from the trunk and carried him easily down to the water’s edge. There was an old wooden jetty there with a neglected looking dinghy tied to it, and Alice gently lowered her macabre burden into the boat and then stepped carefully in after it. Not sure if it would take my weight as well, I stepped gingerly in after her as Alice worked on the knots in the water-swollen rope.

There was only one oar lying in the bottom of the boat, and so with a sigh I began taking off my clothes. “I’ll tow us out,” I told Alice. “I’m a better swimmer than I am rower, anyway.”

Naked, I dropped over the side of the boat into the brackish water, taking hold of the rope Alice had just untied from the jetty. Duck diving under I pulled the rope taut and began swimming through the gloomy, silent green water, towing the boat behind me. I swam out towards the centre of the lake, stopping only when I caught site of a tangle of branches far below me on the lake floor, barely visible through the murky water even to my vampire eyes.

Rising up through the water I flipped my hair back and caught the side of the boat. “Toss him over,” I said to Alice, spitting out a mouthful of lake water. “There are some branches here, I can snag the clothes on them so he’ll stay down long enough for the fish to get at him and take care of the bite marks.”

Alice dropped the body over, the boy making barely a splash as he floated for a moment before his clothes soaked in the water and began to drag him under. I kept a hand on his shirt so I didn’t lose him, and looked at Alice thoughtfully. “We need to leave the boat loose…you’ll have to swim too. I’m sorry, I didn’t think about it but your clothes…” I didn’t even know if she’d ever swum before.

“That’s okay.” Alice took a deep, unneeded breath and then slid herself out of the dinghy and into the water, making a face as the cold waves lapped over her.

“I’ll take him down,” I said quietly, and then dove beneath the waves, dragging the weight of the boy behind me, feeling the weight of sorrow on my heart over another life lost to the blood lust monster that burned inside all of us.

I reached the jetty first and offered a hand to Alice to help her up. While I dried myself off with my slip as best I could and then struggled to put my skirt and sweater back onto my still damp body, Alice did what she could to wring out her soaked clothes, shaking her head like a dog so that drops of water flew from her hair.

“You did well,” I said abruptly. “I wasn’t sure that you could handle it, back at school.”

“I never had to hide a body before,” Alice told me honestly. “When I was newborn I didn’t know enough…I just killed and fed with abandon, leaving all the bodies as they fell. Even when I was trying not to feed off humans anymore, if I slipped and killed one I just left them. I was never settled in one place, you see…if I left behind a gruesome scene it wasn’t something that would ever come back to me. I had my home with the carnival of course, but we were always moving. And when I had to leave the carnival, well, after that it felt like I was little more than a ghost moving through space and time. It wasn’t until I found Jasper that I existed for anyone at all.”

I thought about the people I had killed, the lives that had been ended directly at my hands, and I shuddered. “The people I killed I didn’t hide either,” I told Alice flatly. “I _wanted_ them to be found…I wanted the ones who would die later to know that their time was coming.”

I turned away from Alice and almost ran back to the car, afraid to see her face. I felt it again, the all-consuming hatred and rage and burn for revenge that had driven me in my newborn months. I remembered Royce, and the way I had made him hurt and how I had gloated in being the one with the strength, the one with the power…

But it hadn’t helped. It wasn’t revenge that had started my healing…it had been learning to love and be loved, learning to at least begin accepting what I had become that had made all the difference.

“Do you know about that?” I asked Alice expressionlessly as she slipped into the car beside me. “About what happened to me, and what I did afterwards?”

Alice nodded, reluctantly. “My visions…” she whispered. “I saw you. I knew your story before I ever met you.”

For a moment I could feel myself writhing under the remembered shame and horror of my human death. _I hate that you know that! I hate when people know, and when they feel pity or look at me like a victim, like I’m weak and helpless…_ But Alice’s face held no judgement as she smiled at me a little tentatively. “I’m sorry,” she offered.

I sighed, and felt the tension leave my shoulders. “At least you knowing everything already means I don’t have to talk about it,” I said. _And you’re my sister now, and my friend…_ My human death and vampire birth had been so traumatic and had shaped the person I became in such deep and fundamental ways. _If you want to know me, then you have to know that too. You have to know all of it…please don’t turn away from me because of it._

And judging by the trusting smile Alice gave me and the way she reached across to gently touch my arm, it seemed as though I was lucky enough to have found another person who was going to accept me as I was.


	12. Family

For a moment I concentrated on reversing the car out of the thicket and getting us back on the path towards home, but then I spoke again. “Will Jasper be very upset about today?” I knew the high standards of behaviour and control Jasper held himself too, and my heart ached at the thought of him struggling with failure.

Alice’s face was sober. “He judges himself very harshly for what he sees as a lack of discipline. He was also unhappy that you and I were going to take care of the matter; he would prefer to clean up his own messes.

Oh, not that! “Boys!” I snorted in disgust.

Alice giggled, and I grinned at her companionably. “Emmett’s the same way. He gets very upset when he thinks I’m emasculating him!” I laughed a little, and then sighed. “But I’ll do whatever it takes to protect him, and unfortunately when it comes to human deaths he’s given me more practice than I would perhaps like over the years.”

“He doesn’t dwell on it though?” Alice questioned “Emmett doesn’t seem to…worry too much.”

I thought about my bull-headed bear of a man, and his eternally optimistic outlook on life and smiled fondly. “No, he doesn’t worry too much. It’s not in his nature to fret about what can’t be changed really. He’s accepted that the two of us need to be equals and that he has to let me take care of him when I can, just as I let him take care of me. Even if that does involve rather more corpses than it would for normal couples.” I laughed, low and wickedly, as I thought of some rather more pleasant ways that Emmett took care of me and I of him. “And of course, there are some very simple things I can do that let Emmett feel like a man again!”’

Alice gave a sudden burst of scandalised laughter, clapping her hands over her mouth to hide her grin. “Rosalie!”

I snorted with laughter. “Oh, don’t play innocent Alice! You know how things are!”

“Between you and Emmett, yes, I know how that is!” Alice wriggled her eyebrows at me in mock outrage before her laugh came pealing out again. Unembarrassed, I stuck my tongue out her and laughed comfortably as we reached the made road and began moving faster.

Alice’s laughter faded, but her eyes were still bright with affection when she looked at me and said seriously, “Thank you Rosalie, for what you did today.”

I let my own smile fade. “It’s nothing more or less than I would do for anyone in the family Alice, and you and Jasper _are_ my family now.” I hesitated for a moment, struggling to gather my thoughts and find the courage to share them. “I don’t find it easy to be open,” I said at last. “Trust is hard for me, and I know I can be a complete bitch and I push people away…but I’m glad you’re here Alice. You and Jasper. I’m glad you’re my sister now.”

Esme met us in the front hallway when we reached home, looking worried to see the two of us alone and looking so damp and dishevelled.

“There was an accident at school,” I said to her shortly. “We had to hide a body Esme, I’m sorry.” This was not the kind of incident we would ever hide from the family.

“Oh!” Esme clasped her hands together in distress.

I could smell the dank, rotting smell of lake water clinging to my hair, and I picked up the long tail and sniffed at it in distaste. “That’s not the nicest smelling lake in the world- I’m going to have a shower.” I left Alice with Esme. Jasper was hers, and I thought I would leave it up to her how she wanted to share the story with Esme

The water in the shower was hot and the shampoo and soap smelled clean and fresh as I washed myself down. I wondered a little bleakly how Jasper was and what the repercussions of this would be. We had all learned to coexist since he and Alice had walked up to the porch that day…more than that we had learned to be friends and even family, and the thought of something happen to upset the beautiful and fragile balance we had achieved made me feel surprisingly sad.

“Hey baby,” Emmett was in our room when I came in from the shower, pacing restlessly across the floor in front of the window. He immediately crossed to me with a bound and took me in his arms. “Okay?”

“It’s okay,” I said reassuringly, closing my eyes and briefly leaning into him. “Alice and I took care of it, and she said…her visions…she said it’s going to be fine. By the time the body is found they won’t be able to tell manner of death.”

“Convenient really, isn’t it?” Emmett murmured into my hair. “Having the little freak around to see the outcome?”

“Yes, it does have its advantages,” I admitted as I pushed him away and sat down to pull on my stockings. “How is Jasper?”

Emmett frowned. “Pretty cut up about this,” he said honestly. “Edward and I told him that it happens, that it’s awful but that no one is judging. I don’t know that he’s really taken that on board.”

I buckled my shoes with a sigh. Over the sound of Edward’s piano I could hear the others talking in the living room. “I think we should go and talk to him and see what everyone is thinking.”

Emmett stroked my hair and kissed me gently. “We can…as soon as you tell me that you’re okay with what you had to do this afternoon.”

I smiled up at him and gently traced his lips with a fingertip. “I am. It’s not necessarily easy to see a death and then simply make a plan to hide it and carry it out. But it has to be done- it’s part of the way we live. And Jasper…” I hesitated. “He’s my brother, and he’s my friend, Emmett. I didn’t even know I could _have_ friends, but he and Alice have just come in and accepted who and what I am, and they like me anyway.” I laughed, a little embarrassed. “And maybe it’s selfish, but I don’t want to give them up. I like this new family…I want to keep it.”

“We’ll keep it,” Emmett said confidently. “It works for everyone. So come on angel girl, let’s go and assess the damage.”

 “It’s a sad facet of this difficult life we’ve chosen.” Emmett and I glanced at each other. We could hear Carlisle talking as we walked along the hall. “That there are times we stumble on the path, and at those times the consequences are profound. But you are trying Jasper, you’ve resisted countless temptations and you know you can do it, and now you just have to keep trying.”

“You’re not the only one who’s done it,” Emmett jumped in while he was still walking into the room. He dropped on to the sofa beside Alice, reaching past her to affectionately cuff Jasper on the shoulder. I squeezed onto the sofa beside Emmett, who wrapped his arm around me and briefly kissed my hair.

“You’re not the only one who’s done it,” he said to Jasper again, his voice low and serious. “Being surrounded by that temptation all the time…it happens. Trust me, I know and when it was me I felt like shit about it, but you have to let it go.” He made a face at me, and I knew the two of us were remembering times when Emmett had been the one with red eyes and a suffering conscience. “We just have to try and minimise the repercussions.”

“We’ve done that,” I interjected practically. “Alice has seen it- the body will be found but there’ll be no evidence of how he really died. It will be ruled a drowning.”

“I appreciate all you’ve done for me today,” Jasper said slowly, “But I cannot allow you to take responsibility for my failings in this way again.”

_Well, I’d prefer not to take responsibility for it again either…but I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe and the family together._

I raised my eyes at Alice, who sighed mournfully and took Jasper’s big hand, holding it between her two small ones. “Jasper my darling, please don’t do this.”

“Alice…” Jasper said in a tight voice, raising her hands to his mouth and kissing her knuckles. His jaw was clenched.

“No.” Alice said firmly, looking around the room. “You have to understand Jasper, that this is our family now. What’s done to help each other isn’t done out of obligation, but out of love, because we belong together. All of us.”

“Alice is right,” Carlisle said calmly, and I heard the smile in his voice. “Jasper, you and Alice have added a breath of fresh air and a new layer of strength and caring to this family. We _want_ you here because of who you are, whatever that takes.”

“I’m not able to do what you all do, not yet,” Jasper insisted stubbornly. “I should not have attended school when even I can tell my control is so tenuous. I cannot continue to put the safety and secrecy of the family at risk with my own unpredictability.”

Alice looked as though she was about to cry, even though I knew that was impossible. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to him. “This is all my fault. I should have known, and not been so wrapped up in doing what I wanted to do to think about you.”

_Oh my god, this is like being in a room full of Edwards…everyone wants to take the blame and wallow in guilt and angst. Well, screw that._

“So what are you saying Jasper?” I said impatiently. “You made a mistake…yes, we know. What would you have us do? Crucify you for it? It’s not as though what’s been done can be undone.”

Emmett touched my mouth. “Go easy baby.”

I flipped his hand away. “I just want to get to the point! We can sit here navel gazing and introspective all night, or we can just deal with the facts.” I looked at Jasper half defiantly. “You killed someone. It was a mistake, you’re sorry, and Alice and I have fixed it so it won’t come back onto the family. Because you _are_ part of the family now, and damned if I’ll let you take yourself and my sister away just when we’ve found each other because you have some warped idea about responsibility.”

   The silence after my outburst was broken by Edward playing a soft note on the piano and laughing gently. “Tell us how you _really_ feel, Rosalie,” he said.

I whipped my head towards him defensively, but he was smiling at me in genuine affection and amusement, and I relaxed and grinned at him sweetly. “Not all of us like to wallow in inner torment Edward!”

Jasper raised his eyebrows at me, and I met his gaze as openly and honestly as I could. “I mean it Jasper,” I said softly. “You and Alice are Cullens, and part of this family now.” I knew he had to be feeling the emotion behind the words.

“And we take care of our family,” Esme said firmly. “We’ve made a family from strangers, but the bonds are real Jasper.”

“This isn’t an easy life we’ve all chosen,” Carlisle said thoughtfully. “Maintaining our essential humanity in the face of vampirism is a constant challenge, but I think that the family we’ve made together is key to our success. The love and support of a family…well, you’ve _felt_ it Jasper. You told me how it feels to you here.”

“I don’t wish to go away,” Jasper said, his voice barely audible. “You’re right about the family Carlisle, and the way it feels to be part of this- I do want that. And Alice wants this…you deserve everything, darlin’, and I wouldn’t take you away from anything that makes you so happy as you are here.” He hesitated. “I need to be honest though, and I don’t believe that school is possible for me. Not yet. It’s too much, too constant…”

“That’s my fault for pushing it,” Alice jumped in guiltily. “I forget that it really hasn’t been so long for you. It’s only been a year and a half of even trying to resist and abstain, coming after a long time of following your instincts every day. It took me longer than that.”

“The more human blood you drink, the stronger the desire for it grows,” Edward said. “I was vegetarian from the start with Carlisle, but then there came a time where I explored the darker side…it was harder to go back to denying myself after indulging than it was to go without at the start.”

“Fuck,” Emmett muttered irreverently. “I’d better never go feral…I’ll never get control back if it’s any harder than it was!” He made a comical face of horror at me as everyone laughed.

“We don’t have to go to school,” Alice said to Jasper, a smile blooming on her face. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“I do _want_ to make this work,” Jasper admitted, his gaze moving from one of us to the next.

“You just need time,” Carlisle said encouragingly. “And if there’s one thing we have in abundance it’s time!”

Alice giggled joyously. “We won’t go to school, you and I. We’ll stay home and learn and play here.”

“I can teach you to cook,” Esme teased. “I might be a little rusty after all this time, but I ran a human household once upon a time and I do know how to cook!”

Alice clapped. “See…who needs school?”

Jasper’s grin was genuine, and he broke into a laugh as Edward played a jaunty little tune on the piano and said, “Don’t worry Emmett…Rosalie and I can make you keep up your French lessons. It wouldn’t do at all for you to miss out on something you’re so passionately fond of.”

Emmett growled in mock rage and dove across the room, and I winced at the crashing sound as the two of them collided and went rolling off the piano bench and over the floor.

“Outside!” Esme implored, and then I laughed as Jasper grabbed the two of them by the scruff of their necks and dragged them through the French doors to the porch and down onto the lawn. I heard Emmett’s roar and Edward’s muttered curses, and then Jasper bellowed with outrage and the three of them became nothing more than a blur of laughing, wrestling vampires as the rolled across the grass. I rolled my eyes with a tolerant sigh, but as I caught Alice’s eye a smile spread across my face. _My sister._ I liked the sound of it.

“Come on,” Alice said, holding out her hand to me. “Let’s go and see what they’re doing.”

And without hesitating I took it and the two of us stepped out on to the porch. I stood for a moment, watching as Jasper came and embraced Alice with a luminous smile, looking from the two of them back to Carlisle and Esme still sitting in the living room and then down to Edward and Emmett still wrestling on the lawn. Strangers who had become so much more…family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, Twilight and all these characters were the creation of Stephenie Meyer- I love and appreciate her making them all up and then letting us play with them!  
> Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing- I love chatting with you. I really enjoyed doing this one because it was just looking at the relationships at a really intense time for the family. I love the idea of Rosalie and Alice being sisters (even if she’ll get kicked to the curb when Bella turns up, lol) and the Rosalie and Jasper brother and sister dynamic. And of course Rosalie and Emmett, my forever favourites!  
> I’ve made a start on something new for me, and I’m trying writing an all-human story. I know, for me with my obsessive following of canon this is a BIG step out of my comfort zone! But hey, what’s life without a challenge? Anyway, I’ll hopefully have that started soon for anyone who’s interested in something like that.


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